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Mercy of the Dragon – Nick Kyme

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Vulkan: Lord of Drakes’

A Black Library Publication

Mercy of the Dragon

Nick Kyme

The final wall had fallen, and with it Venikov. The city had been called ‘the Bloody Bastion’ by the Ranknar Blood-Guard. It was impregnable, they had said. Now Venikov burned, its precincts as hollow as the confidence that had once proclaimed it unbreakable.

And as it fell, and burned, the Imperial war machine ground on.

Sarda watched the city fall through his omniscope, glad for the kilometres between him and the armour-clad star warriors who had laid siege to his world. The hills where he had led those fleeing the destruction of Venikov would do little to stop the oppressors, however.

‘How many?’ asked Veddus. Sarda thought the goreov priest sounded weary, not just with the fatigue of the war but a spiritual malaise that came with the almost certain knowledge that your culture and everything you knew would soon be extinguished and replaced by another.

But then Sarda had always thought too much. He had been thinking ever since the so-called Emperor had made his proclamation. The Emperor had spoken of unity and compliance, but to Sarda this had sounded like conquest and annihilation. He adjusted the strap on his leather hauberk, suddenly uncomfortable.

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch has forged a last redoubt. At the old keep in southern Venikov.’

‘How many, captain?’ repeated Veddus, the sound of a cloak rasping as he swept closer.

Sarda tweaked the brass omniscope, adjusting the dials to focus in on the warriors and refugees fleeing Venikov. They were heading south, to the hills, to the next city on Erod. The last city. He adjusted his armour again. The studs were digging in through his padded jerkin. A rime of salt crusted his forehead where his leather helm met skin and made him sweat.

‘A few thousand.’

‘Is that all?’ uttered Veddus, pausing at the thought.

Sarda heard the priest’s breath reverberate against the brass mask. ‘Over a hundred thousand men entered that city.’

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch has another thousand trying to hold them off.’

‘Teeth of Ranknar…’ hissed Veddus.

Sarda doubted their patron god was listening. There was only one god that really mattered now, and he was on the other side. The Dragon.

‘We’ll need to fall back to Romistad. The Red Citadel is formidable,’ said Sarda.

Veddus nodded, starting to grow in confidence again. ‘Yes. Out here in the hills we are vulnerable. The Red Citadel can withstand a siege. Let’s see if these curs have the stomach for it. I’ll see the Dragon slain on our walls. Bled dry! I swear it by Ranknar!’

A great explosion lit the horizon to the north. Tremors were felt as far as the hills. They ripped Venikov and the old keep apart.

Sarda lowered the omniscope, and let out a long shuddering breath. He faced Veddus. The blank visage of the mask was reflected in the priest’s eyes. The mask’s stylised representation of a gaunt human face, edged instead of curved, could not hide his fear.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What happened?’

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch is dead, goreov.’

Veddus swallowed audibly. ‘Are you certain?’

Sarda pointed a crimson glove in the direction of the city.

Except there was no city. Venikov was gone.

Only fire remained, a conflagration so large and ferocious it engulfed the sky like slow spreading ink and turned it red. And at the heart of the blaze, killing with fang and claw, a giant in emerald scale.

A myth brought terrifyingly to life.

Veddus scarcely had voice enough to name it out loud, ‘The Dragon…’

‘I am a son of a blacksmith,’ said Vulkan, gazing across the desert, ‘and you…’

‘What?’ asked the Outlander. ‘What am I?’

Vulkan turned to regard the warrior next to him.

‘You are no mere outlander.’

The heat of the day was fading on Nocturne and the tribesmen out on the ash plains were bringing in their herds as the two great beings stood on a high dune looking out at a world of fire.

The warrior bowed His head, acknowledging the truth. He then raised a gauntleted hand to the sun and watched the light reflect off the metal. He had shed a lie, this warrior, one meant to put the Nocturneans and their chieftain at ease.

‘Am I not a man, Vulkan?’ He asked, the rays catching not only His gauntlet but the rest of His armour-clad body, so that He shone with a radiant golden light.

‘You look like a king,’ Vulkan replied, and for the first time felt uncomfortable in the rough apparel of a blacksmith.

‘I am no king, but is a king not also a man?’

‘Not to the vassals of his kingdom.’

The warrior smiled, a mentor pleased with his student, and turned to face Vulkan. His hair caught on the hot wind, trailing like black smoke. His short red cloak fluttered, a statesman about to address his people.

‘I am the Emperor.’

‘Ah,’ said Vulkan, his turn to smile now, ‘greater than a king. And your empire is the stars?’

The Emperor followed Vulkan’s gaze to the red-stained heavens and grew sombre.

‘Not yet. There is darkness out in the void.’ He looked back at Vulkan, His eyes cold with sorrow. ‘That is why I need you.’ This mood lasted only a moment before the warmth returned. ‘A blacksmith’s son. To help me bring the light.’

‘Of creation?’

‘Yes. And to be one of my generals.’

Vulkan scowled, suddenly ill at ease.

‘I am no warlord.’

‘And yet war has come to the galaxy. It must, Vulkan, and you shall be one of those who leads it. Mankind must emerge from Old Night and embrace the Truth.’

‘Your truth?’ The words had the bite of accusation that Vulkan did not try to soften.

‘The Imperial Truth. That there are no gods and mankind’s fate is what he or she makes it.’

‘I know only the truth of metal and how it bends to fire,’ Vulkan looked down at his hands as if imagining the fuller gripped against his leathern skin, ‘the truth of what I can see, and the earth beneath my feet.’

‘And that is why I need you.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘You will.’

‘And what if I do not wish to leave? General, warlord, call it what you will, but I have never imagined a sword in my hand or an army at my command.’

‘You lead your people.’

‘That is different. I protect Nocturne from those who would see it harmed, or enslaved. You are talking about conquest. I am a maker, not a destroyer.’

‘You would prefer a hammer to a sword, and an anvil against which to strike it.’

Vulkan nodded.

The Emperor stepped out of the light and His lustre appeared to fade. He seemed smaller, more ordinary. His face looked weathered, as if He had spent some time out in the wild places of His world. It was the face of a farmer or a hunter.

‘I want you to join me willingly, Vulkan. Will you allow me to convince you? I am confident you will see the necessity of your presence and see my cause as just.’

The wind rose across the desert, bringing with it the scent of ash. A mountain peak erupted, releasing a tongue of flame that tasted the heavens. From deep beneath the earth a sympathetic roar answered.

‘The Time of Trial comes again soon,’ said Vulkan.

‘It does,’ said the Emperor, ‘and it touches more than just this world. This is a trial for all of mankind.’

Vulkan’s gaze lingered on the mountain – its name was Deathfire – before returning again to the Emperor.

‘I agree to your proposal. If you can convince me, I will leave Nocturne and go with you. But I have questions.’

‘Then ask, Vulkan, and I promise you I shall only answer with the truth.’

They had promised the truth, but had come cloaked in lies.

Sarda remembered these words from the Great Goreov, the Incarnadine himself. They were to be the priest’s last – the violent kiss of heat as the temple dais turned into a storm of fire, and blood drowned out what followed.

The priests were all dead bar one, their faith slain along with them.

‘We will still have vengeance,’ said Veddus, leaning in to Sarda’s ear. He could smell the alcohol on the goreov’s breath. It had the tang of warm iron to it.

They had sealed the gates to the Red Citadel. Cannons girded its high, rust-red walls. Men thronged its battlements dressed in full martial panoply: Blood-Guard in crimson leather and Red Knights in ceramic war-garb that reflected their namesake. It was a long, deep wall the garrison held, one that stretched for almost a kilometre to both the east and the west. At the heart of the city, imposing and formidable, was Ranknar’s oldest keep. It had never been taken. Ever. The Incarnadine who held it held Ranknar.

Yet as Venikov faded to a dirty orange glow on the horizon, those behind the walls cowered. They feared the fire. They feared the Dragon.

‘We should not have refused them,’ said Sarda, and felt himself yanked hard by his gorget to face Veddus.

‘Renounce our faith!’ the priest spat drunkenly, and drew a few eyes in their direction. ‘You are a holy warrior of Ranknar…’ He trailed off. The title had less and less meaning with every passing hour.

‘And where is Ranknar now?’ asked Sarda.

Veddus released him. ‘He would not abandon us,’ he rasped, and looked to the courtyard below. ‘We must make a sacrifice…’

Sarda seized the priest’s wrist as he made to draw his bloodletter. The knife’s dark edge caught the fading light and flashed in Veddus’ eyes, making him squint.

‘It does not matter any more. What good would it do?’ said Sarda.

Veddus made a half-hearted struggle. Those who caught his hungry gaze recoiled.

‘We can still make an offering. And we have weapons. More than one. They have served Erod for centuries. The blessed of Ranknar. He would not–’ The words caught in his throat as he joined the hundreds of others in the Red Citadel staring at the horizon.

A black, irregular line stood out amongst the smoke and the fading glow of fire. It was a slow moving tide, a wave of elongated cannon barrels, tank tracks and riveted armour, and it was about to wash Romistad and the Red Citadel away.

‘Raise shields!’ a watchman cried.

‘Ranknar preserve us…’ whispered Veddus, as the heavens shook with manufactured thunder and the Imperial bombardment began.

And as the first enemy shells began to fall, and the cannons on the Red Citadel’s walls answered, a dark mood came over Veddus.

‘Gather them, Sarda.’ The bloodletter kissed the warrior’s neck and drew a bead of fluid shaped like a red ruby. ‘As many as you can.’ He looked to the Imperial line and the star-warriors advancing heedlessly into the Ranknar cannonade. ‘I will anoint the bogatyrs, and then unleash them.’

‘And if they fail?’ asked Sarda.

‘With faith, they shall not,’ said the priest, bile colouring his voice. ‘But if they do, then we both know we have one last gambit to play.’

‘Was it a trick?’ asked Vulkan, looking to the sky and half expecting the promised ship to appear, belching fire through a swathe of sulphuric cloud.

‘A trick?’ asked the Emperor.

‘The way you shed your disguise. You didn’t merely cast off a cloak or lower a mask, you changed… everything. Is this,’ he gestured to the Emperor in His gilded glory, ‘your true self?’

‘Isn’t identity a matter of perception? You see… what, a gold-clad ruler? A king, you said. Others might see something different. A man. A father.’

‘But was it a trick?’ Vulkan pressed.

‘What does it matter? Please,’ said the Emperor holding up a hand to show His sincerity, ‘I am not trying to avoid the question, but I am interested in your rationale for asking it.’

‘I would know the manner and design of the man who bids me leave my home and people. I am a simple man, but do not think of me as credulous.’

‘You are neither, Vulkan,’ the Emperor replied, but did not elaborate, ‘and, yes, I suppose it was a trick of sorts. A means of determining the truth.’

‘Then are you a sorcerer?’ Vulkan asked. ‘Was it magic?’

The Emperor’s mood darkened, but fractionally, so that only someone who was particularly astute would notice. Vulkan slightly raised his eyebrow.

‘Not a sorcerer,’ said the Emperor. ‘Magic… is not real, it is merely science yet to be understood. Show a primitive culture fire for the first time and they call it magic. Bring a starship to a backwards world yet to invent the combustion engine and it is hailed as witchcraft. Superstition, the darkness of old ways and the atrocities committed in their name, that is what I wish to bring an end to.’

‘So, you are a scientist?’

‘A reductive term,’ the Emperor answered, thoughtful, ‘but as fitting as any. I have a laboratory and have accomplished much to reach this point, through experimentation and endeavour.’

‘And war,’ said Vulkan. ‘You are a warrior too.’

‘Yes, and war. I won’t lie, there has been blood spilled on this journey and there will be more. I never imagined the enlightenment of mankind would be an easy task, nor one accomplished without violence. However regrettable.’ The Emperor’s eyes seem to cloud for a moment then, lost in abstract thought. ‘I have had failures. Some of which I shall never speak of.’

‘My brothers?’

The Emperor did not answer, and that was answer enough.

‘Will you not tell me of them?’ asked Vulkan. ‘Are they like me?’

‘Utterly unlike you,’ said the Emperor, brightening, ‘and that is your single greatest trait. My proudest achievement.’

‘Will I meet them if I agree to follow you into the stars?’

‘Yes, you will, though I have yet to find them all. You will learn much from them, and they from you.’

Vulkan glanced down at the sand accumulating around his boots. The desert was shifting again. Soon it would swallow this ridge and another would emerge elsewhere.

‘Are they from worlds like Nocturne?’

‘As harsh and beautiful, you mean?’ asked the Emperor. ‘Some are. Some are kings, others are scholars, chieftains, slaves…’ his eyes fell upon Vulkan, ‘even blacksmiths.’

‘What would they think of me? Could I really feel a bond of fraternity with them? And they with me?’

The Emperor smiled. ‘Let me tell you of Ferrus.’

The Gorgon grinned, an altogether ugly expression on such a grizzled face.

‘He is ferocious,’ he said, his voice as gritty and harsh as his appearance. His black armour was shorn to the bare ceramite in places, though the scorch marks caused by fire barely showed. ‘The way you described him, I thought…’

‘You did not expect a warrior,’ said the Emperor, His gilded panoply gleaming. He stood upon a blasted hillock, not that He needed the vantage to look imposing. His stature and power spoke for themselves. Despite the battles, He remained pristine. As radiant and terrifying as a nuclear sunrise.

‘I expected a blacksmith, but he is a destroyer.’

Much of the outer lands beyond the major cities of Ranknar had been reduced to ash. A bombardment lasting several days had softened up the native defences, but had seen the same forces dug in instead of broken as the Emperor had hoped. The Imperial assault, when it came, swept across all six continents as relentless as a hurricane. Still, the Ranknar had endured, buoyed by their perverse faith, the reason for the Imperium’s proclamation of extinction.

And so the Emperor had unleashed His Dragon, and the lands had burned. Only then, slowly swallowed by fire, had the Ranknar showed any signs of defeat.

‘I thought the Wolf King had fury,’ said Ferrus, admiring the choleric spirit of his newfound brother, ‘but this… Where did you find him?’

‘A death world,’ said the Emperor, His piercing gaze seeing more and ranging farther than any other on both the battlefield and second battle line where He stood with His son, Ferrus Manus. ‘One consumed by fire.’

Ferrus gave a snort of laughter.

They watched from the blasted hillock, the troops and armoured divisions arrayed before them and ready for the Gorgon’s command. His warriors, his Iron Hands. The Dragon led a company of them, and several cohorts of army auxilia. The scent of engines and hot metal from the idling artillery and heavy battle tanks wafted over the mustering, but petered out and was swallowed up by the stink of sweat and death by the time it reached the battle less than a hundred metres away.

Ferrus folded his silver arms, restive. They shimmered with an uncanny lustre, the metal of their forging as miraculous as it was mysterious. A massive warhammer lay against one armoured shoulder, a gift from Fulgrim and one he desired to bloody again. For now, he would do as his father ordered. He would watch, and let the Dragon wreak havoc. Ferrus suspected it was not only his newfound brother who was being tested this day.

‘Draconic in both aspect and temperament,’ he said, alluding to the savage scalloped war-plate worn by the Dragon.

‘You taught him much of your craft, Ferrus?’ asked the Emperor.

‘None, in truth. He needed no help in that regard. When I reached the forge, he was gone and the armour with him.’

The Emperor smiled, as if pleased with His works.

‘Your assessment?’

‘Overly flamboyant, but it appears to serve well.’

‘Him, not his armour, Ferrus.’

A raised eyebrow and a grunt of acknowledgement preceded the Gorgon’s reply.

‘He fights like a Medusan ur-wyrm. Are they all like that where he came from?’

‘No, he is unique. As are you.’

His silver fingers clenched and unclenched without Ferrus realising. He nodded.

‘He is impressive,’ he admitted, then turned disdainful, ‘but Russ and Horus, even Fulgrim, they match his prowess. I see nothing special about him.’

‘You will.’ The Emperor paused abruptly, and the Gorgon felt his hackles rise. ‘They are opening the gates.’

Ferrus hid his unease at his father’s use of prescience, remaining bullish. ‘Then they are as foolish as they are blind. A sortie is insane. They don’t know when they are beaten.’

‘Does any beast, when cornered?’

‘They risk annihilation,’ said Ferrus, as the gigantic city gates did indeed open.

‘Desperate men perform desperate acts. I feel fear in them. A fearful enemy attacks without restraint. This will be costly for us.’

A rust-red mist gathered around the opening, obscuring whatever was coming through.

‘They are all soldiers, and know the risk.’

‘Be wary of profligacy, my son. Life is not so cheap as you might think.’

The ruddy fog parted and what stood before the gate stopped the Gorgon’s reply dead. His eyes widened.

The ground shook, felt as far away as the second battle line.

Ferrus swung his warhammer into both hands.

‘Now can we intervene?’

The Emperor had already drawn a glittering, golden sword. Its edge burst into flames.

‘Yes, now we can.’

The bogatyrs did not walk alone, and where they walked the ground trembled.

Sarda watched them stride from the gate in the languid manner that creatures of such immense stature have, three golem-engines, their phage-swords bleeding red aether and their ocular weapon mounts cycling to lethality. He stood almost eye-to-eye with the bogatyrs despite the fact he was nearly twenty metres up on the city’s foremost battlements. His awe at the sight of the Red Citadel’s guardians hid a secret disgust for the method by which they had been roused for war.

An army came with them. Six phalanxes of Red Knights of the Orders Sangrov and Incarnadov rode at the flanks while twelve platoons of Blood-Guard brought up the rear, gun-chariots in tow.

Thunder cracked overhead as artillery on both sides exchanged fire across a kilometres-long battlefront. The tanks of the Imperium sat on the ridge beyond the city, dug in behind makeshift palisades. They faced the cannons jutting from the Red Citadel’s walls. Smoke and fire laced the air with every fresh volley. The bogatyrs strode through it, dauntless.

Plumes of earth and fire reached up into the sky with every explosive impact, taking the broken bodies of men with them. The bogatyrs remained inviolate, emerging through overlapping clouds of smoke, their energy shields crackling with particulate.

Sarda watched an ivory giant cut an Imperial tank in two. The vehicle’s bifurcated sides fell open, exposing a ruined anatomy within. Nothing lived; the red aether from the phage-swords saw to that. The bogatyrs had the appearance of marble statues, like knights of antiquity, but were nothing of the sort. Fashioned by the goreov priests, they were war engines, part machine, part biological.

They reaped death through the Imperial ranks.

Scores of men fell burning to the radiation beams of a bogatyr’s ocular array; another reduced a transport vehicle to molten slag. Small victories, but they gave the Red Knights and the Blood-Guard heart.

Clinging to the battlement’s edge, almost wishing he could be part of the melee, Sarda dared to believe…

‘We can defeat them,’ whispered Veddus. The skin of his hands and forearms was flecked with dark spots. His manner verged on manic, but Sarda agreed. ‘Ranknar has not abandoned us. He is with us.’

And Veddus turned as he heard others on the battlements echo his words. He repeated them. Louder.

‘He is with us!’

The defenders roared back.

‘Ranknar!’

‘Wait…’ Sarda bellowed over the cries of affirmation. He gestured to the battlefield and all eyes went to where a lone figure held his ground, standing in defiance of the bogatyrs.

Sarda held his breath. Before the ivory knights was a dragon.

‘I believe you,’ said Vulkan, staring into the desert reaches, trying to commit to memory this desolation that he called home.

‘In the Imperial Truth?’

‘I believe you want to save mankind. I believe you have a vision and mean to see it done whatever the cost.’

‘I have and I will,’ the Emperor replied. ‘It sounds bloody. It will be. Conquest always is, but there is darkness in the galaxy, Vulkan, the remnants left behind after Old Night. Horrors you can scarcely imagine. Superstition and fear, a race enslaved by its own isolation. There is but one path for mankind that does not end in extinction. The path I offer. I desire mankind’s pre-eminence. Its evolution. I raised armies and unified a world to try to accomplish it.’

‘And created sons, primarchs.’

‘Yes,’ said the Emperor, His voice serious but not unkind. ‘I made you. And your brothers.’

Vulkan frowned. ‘Why? You already said we are your generals, your legacy, but why create us so differently and cast us far from your sight?’

The Emperor pursed His lips, and Vulkan suspected there were some truths He would not reveal.

‘I am a singular being, Vulkan. I am a man, and also more than man. I sometimes think of myself as a creator, much as you think of yourself. A maker. At other times, a father. Yet, I find I am… removed. My concerns are of a lofty nature.’

‘You cannot relate to them,’ said Vulkan, understanding. ‘To mankind, even though you claim to be one of them. You made sons so that you would not be alone, so that you could share company with like minds, if not equal minds.’

The Emperor smiled. ‘You are partly right. I have a better fate for mankind. I would see them elevated, long lasting, perpetual.’

‘And what of the fates of your sons, sent across the void to worlds of fire and ice? Was that too a part of your design?’

‘I see much, but not all,’ was all the Emperor would say, and again Vulkan sensed there was more.

Above, the throaty roar of engines shook the sky. A ship appeared, obscured by cloud, a distant but growing silhouette in the heavens.

‘A vessel comes,’ said the Emperor. ‘It is bound for Terra and will arrive soon.’ He turned to Vulkan. ‘Have I convinced you?’

Vulkan watched the ship, imagining his destiny closing around him, the wide aperture of possibility narrowing to a single vanishing point.

‘Vulkan…’ said the Emperor, when no answer came, ‘are you decided?’

Vulkan met his father’s gaze, a father that up until a few hours ago he did not know he had. N’bel was his father, a blacksmith, a good man, a just man. Could this Emperor claim to be so too?

‘To leave Nocturne and my people unprotected, it is no easy thing you ask. You want to bring light into darkness, and you will wage war to achieve it. You need warlords. A sword to kill or conquer, not a hammer to build with.’

‘I need you, Vulkan. That is why I am here. It is the sole reason I have crossed the sea of stars to reach you. A sword to conquer, a hammer to build. One need not render the other obsolete.’

Vulkan thought on that. He looked back to the desert again, hoping some truth that had so far eluded him would be revealed in the whirling eddies playing across the sand.

‘I am torn. I have never considered myself a warrior or a general. I only want peace. You have told me much of my brothers, of Ferrus, of Fulgrim, Leman and Horus. They are generals, bellicose and proud. They are artisans and leaders of men, the conquerors for your age of Imperium. I am a blacksmith, a maker. I understand what I might learn from them, and they from each other. But what could I possibly teach them, father? Answer this and then I will decide.’

The bogatyr burned, broken apart, its ankles shorn to stumps. It wallowed on the battlefield, a sea beast deserted by the tide and left to die.

The Dragon stood upon its corpse, the exultant victor. As he raised his blades to the missile-choked sky, a cheer went up from the warriors he led. This sentiment was reversed in the groan of despair vented by the Ranknar army.

Sarda looked on in disbelief as the other two golem-engines shared the fate of the first. They had dispersed across the battlefield, majestic and titanic generals leading the army on. One fell to a determined fusillade of turret fire from three Imperial tank squadrons. It shook as its energy shield imploded and then a deep crack split its breastplate, presaging critical damage. It took one more faltering step, a dead thing unable to comprehend it was no longer alive, before lurching forwards and crashing to the ground. Men from both sides died beneath it, flattened like paper effigies. Several of the tanks that landed the killing blow were crushed. Explosions rippled the bogatyr’s flaming carcass like nerve tremors.

Then it was still.

The last died more swiftly, almost too fast to perceive. A firestorm took it, or a man all clad in gold. Sarda saw both, and yet neither, glimpses of something that defied reasonable explanation, before the bogatyr capitulated utterly. It simply peeled apart as if whatever stitched its being together had unspooled. Limbs, torso and head all separated. Unable to mount a defence or appreciate its demise, it simply discombobulated. The east and west flanks collapsed after these defeats, the army’s will like the sand in a broken hourglass, without a powerful general to contain and steer it. Those who remained retreated to the gate for salvation.

The army withdrew, the dying Order Sangrov buying what meagre time they could for Ranknar. The last of the sand, slowly tipping out.

‘We have… we have no other choice.’ Veddus’ fear spread with viral efficiency as he watched the rout, but it was threaded with madness, like blood laced through spit. A feral desire to inflict pain on the aggressors outside Romistad’s walls had taken over the priest.

‘We can end this,’ said Sarda.

Veddus snorted his derision. ‘It ends with death. Ours and theirs. We have the ultimate weapons to punish them. The last gambit.’

‘It’s not a gambit if we are all dead, priest. We can end this,’ Sarda repeated. ‘We can offer to surrender.’

The hint of something murderous flashed in Veddus’ eyes. ‘There will be none. Or do you defy me?’ The knife shimmered red in the light.

Sarda glanced down to the courtyard. Letting out a ragged breath, he gave the order to bar the gates as the last dregs of the army came through it, and to fight to the death.

A rearguard of knights had been left behind to slow the Imperial army down. They wore close-fitting, ceramic armour. It was sleek, durable, and the colour of flayed muscle. The helms had a sophisticated targeting array. Each knight carried a propelling lance with a concomitant energy core and self-loading shot pistols mounted on their wrists. They rode grav-sleds, heavily armoured to the front and tapering to a manoeuvring fin at the back.

But they were still men, and men could not stand against primarchs.

Ferrus destroyed every knight that dared to cross swords with him, his hammer a deadly metronome in his silver hands. He silently applauded their bravery, but swatted them aside like wasps. An irritant but nothing more.

His true quarry ranged ahead, possessed by an even greater fury and about to charge the gates of the city on his own. When Ferrus came upon the first of the felled statue-engines and saw what its shattered chest cavity harboured, he realised why.

‘Blood of Asirnoth…’

He felt the same pure rage well up inside him that had overtaken the Dragon.

A child lay dying in the carcass of the statue-engine, a withered and wretched thing, half drained of blood. It was abominable science, a machine fuelled by the blood of the living, a parasitical engine fed children to give it animus.

Appalled, Ferrus almost missed the vox-crackle in his warhelm. It was the Dragon.

‘Bring down the gates,’ he said, drunk on wrath, his voice a predatory snarl. ‘Now, father!’

Ferrus found the Emperor on the battlefield, only a short distance away. The Imperial army had closed ranks as the enemy fell back, consolidating to a position of strength, their Emperor inspiring the utmost discipline. If the self-proclaimed Master of Mankind felt anything at the Dragon’s words there was no sign. He merely raised his flaming sword. Moments later, a concentrated barrage struck the main gates of the city, a blow so unerring that Ferrus wondered if the Emperor had applied some of his strange craft to make it so.

The gate split apart, the wall that held it rupturing and collapsing at the same time. Dust and smoke billowed outwards, clouding an outpouring of burned and shattered rock. It was a small breach, a crack in an otherwise sprawling face of rock, but it was all Vulkan needed.

The Dragon ran for the gap in the wall, easily outpacing the few warriors still with him, and killed everything in his path.

Ferrus looked down sadly on the dying child and gave it mercy. Then he went after his brother.

‘To the Dragon!’ he roared to the warriors in his command, vox-boosting his voice so that the very air trembled.

His brother had disappeared into the smoke-choked darkness just in front of the wall.

‘He cannot fight an entire army, even a defeated one, and win,’ he said.

The Emperor did not answer, and Ferrus had no time to look and see if he had heard him.

And then he saw the weapon, wheeled into position on a great iron carriage. It had the look of a spire, tall and ugly. Barbs ran down a dark metal shaft that terminated in a narrow spike like an arrowhead. It protruded menacingly from behind the city’s broken battlements, more dominant than any of its towers and bleeding red miasma.

Ferrus knew its ilk if not this specific design.

Virus weapon.

It was pointing straight up. The natives intended to saturate the atmosphere with a contagion, something wrought by their rancid blood-science.

‘Father…’

Now the Emperor spoke.

‘I have seen it, my son.’

‘There is no time to withdraw. That missile…’

‘I will do what I can to stop it.’

Reacting to the obvious threat, the Imperial artillery chain redoubled its efforts and unleashed repeated missile salvoes against the city.

Detonations marched the walls, blasting revetments, tearing the garrison apart, reaching towards the shattered gatehouse.

Ferrus did not slow. He would get to his brother; he would stop the virus missile from ever launching or they would die together. He had about made peace with his potential death when the Dragon’s voice came over the vox again.

‘Hold your fire! Hold, hold, all weapons!’

His impassioned command reverberated, reaching enemies and allies alike. He stood before the breach, barely a metre away, though the soot and displaced earth made it impossible to see what had made him stop.

It took a few seconds, but the steady barrage began to slow.

Ferrus kept running, possessed of an urgency that felt strange and unsettling, concern for a brother he had never met. Grey cloud briefly obscured his vision, before it passed and he saw him again, his mysterious brother charging the breach.

The last missile fell, already on its deadly path and too late to be recalled or brought down. It struck the gatehouse. It struck the breach.

‘Father!’ Ferrus cried out, surprised at his sudden dismay.

His legionaries turned aghast to where fire and destruction had shattered the gatehouse. Men in the Imperial army ranks slumped, stunned. No one had seen a primarch fall before. Most believed they were immortal.

‘Nothing could survive…’ whispered Ferrus, trying to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. ‘Father, is he…?’ he asked, louder.

The Emperor said nothing, as an anxious silence stole over the battlefield. The fighting had stopped.

‘Wait…’ a weary voice came across the vox, and through the parting smoke, across embers of burning wood and stone still flickering at his leaden feet, emerged the Dragon. He had lost his warhelm and one shoulder guard hung by a ragged thread. There was blood. His own. A crack split his breastplate. He held his left arm close to his body.

Ferrus stopped a metre away.

‘You live, though I cannot fathom how,’ he said, and eyed the onyx-skinned giant with wary respect.

‘I must be tougher than I look.’

Ferrus gave a short, mirthless laugh.

‘You look tough, brother.’ His eyes narrowed, heightened senses still alert to any sudden threat. ‘You bled for them. Why?’

The onyx giant smiled and he moved his arm away to reveal a child lying in his grasp, little more than a babe, terrified but breathing. His red eyes flared like hot coals, diabolic yet warm. It was the first of many contradictions that Ferrus would come to learn about his brother.

‘She lives too,’ he said. ‘And I bled for life, for innocence. She is not alone. There are others. This war is over.’

As they saw the Dragon cradling the child, the warriors of the city lost their taste for blood and laid down their weapons. Then, with the smoke yet to dissipate and the fires of battle still burning, the Emperor came forth and gave his edicts. He promised clemency for the natives and the rule of the Imperium. He promised truth, and shared of his dream for mankind’s pre-eminence amongst the stars.

Sarda had listened dumbly to the words of the golden lord and recalled them dimly as he tramped aboard the transport. He was bound for a ship that would take him and his kind to other worlds, to other colonies. He did not spare a glance for the corpse hanging from the battlements. Veddus could rot for all it mattered now. He had seen the Dragon’s selfless act, witnessing a sacrifice that gave the word fresh meaning in his eyes. Mercy. They had all seen it. He chose to remember it.

And he had heard his name, spoken amongst the Imperials. Not a dragon, not a beast, but a legend all the same.

They had called him Vulkan.

‘What is your answer?’ asked Vulkan.

‘It is simple,’ said the Emperor, and his expression betrayed no emotion beyond the desire to speak the truth. ‘Your brothers will be great and powerful. They are beyond mankind in so many ways, as are you. They will learn to be warriors quickly, the ways of conquest and liberation. Leading armies, inspiring the lesser men around them to greatness will be second nature to them, as it will to you. But your lesson, Vulkan, it is the most crucial and you are uniquely disposed to teach it.’ The Emperor put a fatherly hand on Vulkan’s shoulder. ‘Humanity.’

They did not speak again until the ship came, but when it did Vulkan bid farewell to Nocturne and followed his father into the sea of stars.

About the Author

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-marked and Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Warhammer Chronicles novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

An extract from Vulkan: Lord of Drakes.

The air rippled with heat. Flames jetted from the exhaust pipes of immense forges. Tremors shook the walls of the cavern. The space was vast, but the work it contained was bigger yet. The underbelly of the machine’s hull extended along the entire length of the cavern. Fore and aft passed through openings that had been blasted through the rock, reaching into other caves just as huge, just as hot, where the echoes of the great labour were just as loud. The upper portions of the machine occupied other regions of the honeycomb of caverns beneath the surface of Nocturne. It was surrounded by a cluster of forges, each one worthy of legend, all of them labouring without cease.

Igniax Nomus Rhy’tan walked down the cavern, running his hand against the side of the machine’s hull. The shielding was the thickest he had ever seen on anything that was not a void ship. It was rich in monumental engravings. They celebrated the XVIII Legion and the history of the device. They were also representations of the forges that were bringing renewal to the huge body.

The old and the new, Rhy’tan thought, and wished the words did not trouble him.

A dozen metres away, Forgemaster T’kell had stepped away from a gantry crane and was looking up at the hull with the evaluating, proprietary eye of the true artisan. T’kell’s features looked as if they had been carved from a massive ingot of the same adamantine alloy as the hull. He had been tempered on the anvil of Nocturne long and hard before he had undergone the most honourable reforging of them all, the one that had made him a legionary of the XVIII and a true son of Vulkan.

‘This is fine work, Master T’kell,’ Rhy’tan said as he drew near. ‘A construction of rare strength.’

‘As it should be,’ T’kell muttered, speaking more to himself than to Rhy’tan. Then he turned his head to look at the Igniax. ‘My thanks, brother.’ He smiled, as if grudgingly allowing himself a flicker of pride. Then the smile faded, replaced by a frown. ‘I do still wonder about the weapon’s purpose. It has no conceivable use on Nocturne.’

‘Why would you have imagined it would?’

T’kell shook his head. ‘A momentary foolishness,’ he said. ‘I forget sometimes that we will, and must, leave.’

‘Our destiny lies in the Emperor’s Great Crusade.’

‘It does, it does. I know this. But, Nomus, when will we leave? Where will we go? And what will we use this for?’

‘When it is time, where we are needed and in the proper campaign.’ Rhy’tan spoke with more confidence than he felt.

T’kell looked around the booming cavern. ‘And so we will leave Nocturne,’ he said softly.

‘Leave, but not abandon.’

‘I do understand that. I do.’

‘But…?’

‘But do you really understand your purpose? Do you? I do not. Any more than I understand our work here.’ He slapped a palm against the hull. ‘I know what this can do. But I do not know its true purpose.’

Rhy’tan took a breath, searching for an answer he already knew was out of his reach. In the same instant, he felt a new rhythm in the vibrations shaking the floor. Steady, firm, powerful. He knew what it was even before he saw the look of chagrin in T’kell’s eyes.

I have failed, Rhy’tan thought. I have let my own uncertainty defeat me. His face burning with shame, he turned and bowed his head as the primarch strode towards them.

Vulkan wore the simple, hardened leathers of a smith. He had been labouring at the side of his sons, for the work being done on the machine was as much a produce of his hands as it was the design of his genius. Simple though his attire was, he walked in majesty. Its aura, invisible yet blinding, shone like the glow of a furnace. T’kell’s features were hard, but Vulkan’s were carved of something stronger than stone, invulnerable to erosion yet tempered by wisdom. Vulkan’s face was that of a veteran warrior, one who knew war and could not be broken by it. But it was also the face of one who knew the cost of war, who would never turn away from that cost and who would seek to be the shield against which the waves of conflict would shatter.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ said T’kell.

‘For what?’ Vulkan asked. ‘For having perfectly understandable questions? For wondering what we are about and when we will be about it? We have always been honest with each other, since before we were a Legion. Will we stop now?’

‘No,’ T’kell said.

‘No,’ Vulkan repeated. ‘If you have questions, you must ask them. If I have answers, I must give them to you. If I don’t, I must tell you that too, and the simple fact is that I do not. Not yet. When we shall depart and where our duty will take us, I do not know. But I do know this – the Emperor has a task for us. Our role will be one for which we are eminently suited. As for this,’ he touched the side of the hull with a craftsman’s care, ‘it is a storied vehicle. It took part in one of the proudest moments of the Eighteenth Legion on Terra, long before my father found me again. The machine’s history is legend. And I believe its legend is unfinished. That is why I had it brought here from where it rested on Mars.’

Rhy’tan said, ‘When it sees action again, I have no doubt its legend will grow. Things could hardly be otherwise.’

Vulkan smiled at T’kell. ‘You do not have the answers you seek, but do the ones I have given suffice?’

‘They do, lord,’ T’kell said.

‘Then I will interrupt your work no further,’ said Vulkan. He looked at Rhy’tan. ‘Nomus, will you come with me?’

As Rhy’tan followed his primarch out of the forge chamber, he felt his hearts clench with renewed shame. Vulkan’s words with T’kell had not comforted him. His uncertainty was as strong as ever. And another thought had begun to trouble him. There was a possibility that would explain the new Legion being held back from joining the old one. He did not want to articulate it, especially not to Vulkan. Yet he could not put it from his mind.

The stone gallery ran along the northern end of the highest cavern in the complex. This region was more of a staging ground than a forge. In the centre of the gallery, Vulkan and Rhy’tan looked down upon the expanse of the rockcrete floor. Row upon row of tanks stood waiting to rumble up the ramp that passed beneath the gallery and led to the space port on the surface. Legionaries and Mechanicum tech-priests inspected individual vehicles, teams verifying and adjusting the weapons in preparation for an off-world assault that still hovered in the indefinite future.

The great forces of Vulkan’s Nocturnean Legion were ready for deployment. They had been for some time. The years spent training the legionaries were done. The warriors were ready, and their weapons were forged. Their transport and assault vehicles waited to be launched. The work on the huge machine in the caverns below was the last important task unfinished. When he saw it completed, he would at last lead his sons into battle in the Emperor’s name. In the time he had been absent from Nocturne, fighting and learning at the Emperor’s side, he had led contingents seconded from other Legions. He had been honoured to do so, and he had found true kinship with the Iron Hands of Ferrus Manus. But all of that had been mere prologue. These were his sons, shaped by the fires of Nocturne, and it was at their head that he belonged.

The legionaries of the XVIII would march as soon as he gave the order.

Only he had no order to give.

‘Does it trouble you,’ he asked Rhy’tan, ‘that I could not tell Forgemaster T’kell when we would depart Nocturne?’

The Igniax was silent for a short while, thinking through his answer. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘that does not trouble me.’

‘But something does.’

Rhy’tan was quiet again. Vulkan waited, patient. Rhy’tan always spoke carefully. Vulkan had never heard an outburst from him. That was one of the reasons he valued Rhy’tan. As Igniax, Rhy’tan taught the wisdom of Nocturne’s myths and traditions. The deep, vertical furrows of his cheeks were the marks of many years of experience, earned long before he had become a legionary. He did not act without careful thought. His deliberation also made him a sounding board. Vulkan trusted Rhy’tan to listen, to take to heart the new lessons Vulkan sought to impart and then to convey the lessons to others. Just as importantly, he knew he could trust Rhy’tan to speak with him honestly.

‘Are you troubled, lord?’ Rhy’tan asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you troubled by not knowing when our march will begin? Do you not wonder why the Emperor has not told you where and how we are to rejoin the rest of the Eighteenth?’

Yes, Vulkan thought. It has troubled me since I first asked Him when that time would come, and He responded by keeping me near Him and away from my sons. He did not say all this to Rhy’tan. He said, ‘Yes.’ That was enough to begin with.

‘Do you know how it will become apparent that our time has come?’

‘I do not. But I have faith that I will know. Does this disturb you?’

Vulkan waited once more. Rhy’tan was staring, unseeing, at the floor beneath the gallery. Vulkan watched the Igniax wrestle with himself. It was clear that he would have preferred to keep these particular thoughts locked away, but Vulkan had asked him, and he would have to respond.

The silence stretched on. Vulkan murmured, ‘Remember that we must be honest between ourselves.’

Rhy’tan nodded. ‘I am disturbed by a theory that would explain why we are still not called to join our brothers.’

Vulkan caught Rhy’tan’s very slight hesitation before he used the words ‘our brothers’.

‘Go on,’ he said.

Rhy’tan sighed. ‘I have been wondering if the reason we have not joined our brothers yet is because we are not meant to.’

Vulkan consciously held his fists open and relaxed his fingers. Rhy’tan had hit close to the mark in a number of ways. ‘Go on,’ he said, though he could guess what Rhy’tan was about to say.

‘How does the rest of the Eighteenth fare at present?’ Rhy’tan asked.

‘I do not know.’

‘The reputation of our brothers…’ Rhy’tan hesitated again. ‘It is a point of concern,’ he finished, clearly dismayed with his own euphemism.

Vulkan grimaced. In the years of his service to the Emperor, when he had left Nocturne and fought by his father’s side, his face hidden by his helm, he had heard the muttered judgements about the XVIII. No one questioned the Legion’s valour. No one sought to diminish its victories. But it had thrown itself into so many desperate stands that self-sacrifice had begun, in the eyes of some, to look suicidal.

Vulkan had not ignored the whispers. He had studied the records of the XVIII’s engagements. All of them. He saw the strength and the bravery of the Legion, and its commitment to shield the innocent. He also saw the tally of losses, a tally that seemed to be growing exponentially over time. He had spoken to Rhy’tan of this. The Igniax needed to understand the vision Vulkan had for the Legion. If Rhy’tan was to help spread this vision, it could not be a matter simply of repeating Vulkan’s words. He had to see what the primarch saw.

And they had to speak honestly.

‘There are thoughts and words that oppress you,’ Vulkan said, ‘because you are reluctant to express them. You must speak them. And I must hear them.’

Rhy’tan took a breath, then said, ‘Perhaps we of Nocturne are fated to be the totality of the Eighteenth Legion.’

‘I know, by the hesitation in your voice, that arrogance has not brought you to this conclusion.’ Hear him out, Vulkan thought. This cannot and must not be true, but hear him out. This idea had come to him too, and it had never been welcome.

‘I hope it has not, lord,’ Rhy’tan said. ‘You were taken from Terra and destiny brought you to Nocturne. Your Legion, created without you, dwindles as if its warriors sense, somewhere in their being, its… its incompleteness. Perhaps the old Legion must vanish. Perhaps this is what the Emperor awaits.’

‘Is this what you believe?’ Vulkan asked.

‘I do not know,’ Rhy’tan confessed. ‘It is a thought that grows and refuses to be dismissed.’

‘Have you shared this thought with others?’

‘I have not broached it, but they have with me.’

Vulkan nodded. ‘I see.’ The task you have given me is a heavy one, Father. ‘I’m glad you have told me of this, Nomus,’ he said. ‘I will tell you now that we will put the lie to this belief. The legionaries of Terra are my sons as much as the legionaries of Nocturne. They are your kin. There is a reason why we are as yet separated from them. But it is not to wait out their extinction.’

Rhy’tan bowed his head. ‘I am glad of it, lord,’ he said.

But do you believe it? Vulkan wondered if Rhy’tan was convinced.

He also wondered when the sign from the Emperor would come. He knew it was time for this half of the Legion to play its part in the Crusade. What troubled him was that he did not know what time had come for the other half.

The bombardment blasted down the mountain pass towards the space port of Sybota. The barrage was undisciplined, the ordnance was primitive, and it was devastating. There was no skill in the ork attack, but there was overwhelming abundance. It was as if the sky had turned to stone and then collapsed, falling to earth in a hammering avalanche. The air screamed with the unending whistles of the shells. The ground erupted and erupted and erupted, craters overlapping each other, and the pass was choked with flame and dust.

‘Total loss of visibility, lord commander,’ Artellus Numeon voxed from his Typhon siege tank, Victor of the Caucasus.

Encased in his battle-scarred Terminator armour, riding in the top hatch of the Fellblade Ethnarch’s Doom, Cassian Vaughn wiped the dust from his helm’s lenses. ‘I am well aware of that, first captain.’ Before him was nothing but tumultuous darkness lit by blinding flashes of dirty orange fire.

‘We cannot see the targets to shoot them.’

Despite Numeon’s frustration, the Typhon’s Dreadhammer cannon boomed, the sound reaching Vaughn through the air and over the vox. The flare of the muzzle seared the darkness of the pass, revealing the tank’s position, a hundred metres to Doom’s right. The enormous shell streaked into the tempest of blasts. Moments later, the deep rumble of an entire cliff face collapsing rolled back to Cassian.

‘We know where they were, and where they must be,’ Vaughn said. The range of the ork guns was poor. The artillery barrage was effective only because there were hundreds of the cannons further up the pass and on the lower peaks.

‘The long-range auspex readings show a uniform heat bloom,’ Numeon reported.

‘Then we’ll manage with that.’ Vaughn switched vox-channels, broadcasting to the entire force in the pass. ‘All units, maintain fire. Their storm will not move us. They advance no further.’

Fool, he thought. How many times have you said the same thing this past year? How many lines were we going to hold? How many times have we been driven back?

Once was too often, an insult to the reputation of the XVIII Legion, and the orks had repeated the insult again and again since they had come to the Taras Division. A million of the greenskins, descending upon human systems in a collection of vessels that could not be dignified by the term fleet. They were a swarm, a pestilential wave of hundreds of wrecks, hulks and crude assemblages barely recognisable as ships surrounding a single, central mass the size of a planetoid. In a year of war, Vaughn had not yet been able to determine precisely how large the enemy’s force was. There were more than a million orks, that much the XVIII had been able to estimate. Their numbers might as well have been infinite. A million against the nineteen thousand of the XVIII Legion.

And that was at the start of the war. Vaughn’s legionaries had slowed the ork advance, but they could not stop it. The filthy waves upon waves of greenskin ships and ground troops robbed honour, duty, determination, bravery and self-sacrifice of meaning. All Vaughn had to show for a year of struggle was a diminished Legion and a string of burning, abandoned planets.

Corcyra would soon add its name to the tally of lost worlds in the Anteros System. The XVIII was holding the ground in the pass, but it would not be long before there was no more ground to hold.

Vaughn had deployed the full strength of the XVIII’s heavy armour. The choke point was also the primary approach to Sybota’s east. The north and south were shielded by the embrace of the mountain chain, and to the west lay the ocean that surrounded Corcyra’s single inhabited land mass. The XVIII had used Sybota’s geographic isolation against the greenskin hordes. The Legion had bought time. Now the time was almost gone. The pressure of the invasion was becoming irresistible. Vaughn might as well be trying to hold back tectonic plates.

‘They’re coming closer,’ said Numeon.

‘Then they’ll be harder to miss,’ Vaughn said. But he thought, They will not stop.

The full fury of the bombardment fell on the Legion’s tanks, then beyond. There was no consistency to the power of the greenskin ordnance. Some of the shells failed to explode at all. The ablative armour of the tanks shrugged off many others, their force too weak to cut through the powerful Imperial war machines. But there were just as many that were dangerous, huge masses of densely packed high explosive. They should have blown up inside the cannons that fired them, but instead they arced down to shatter the earth and unleash their fury on the XVIII.

A sudden cluster of massive ordnance struck the tank ahead of Ethnarch’s Doom. The Typhon Bane of the Tempest Galleries weathered the first few impacts, but they kept coming, a hammering of mad destruction, and at last the anvil cracked. Bane’s hull split open, then its ammunition erupted. The Typhon vanished. The fireball expanded through the storm, washing over nearby tanks. Vaughn squinted as the flames reached him, even though his auto-lenses adjusted to the sudden flare. A twisted, glowing chunk of Bane’s hull cartwheeled past him, one corner clanging against the turret of the Fellblade. Vaughn whirled in the hatch and looked back. The trailing flames and the flying rubble stretched ragged fingers in the direction of Sybota’s space port. The bombardment storm hid the skyline of the city from view. Vaughn could see nothing but boiling grey and the burn. But then he heard another thunder, a welcome one, continuous and growing. He saw a glow, the light of a pillar of fire so huge it could shine through the storm. It rose, slowly at first, then faster, climbing higher and higher.

It was the sign of the closest thing to victory the XVIII could still hope to achieve on Corcyra.

‘Orasus,’ Vaughn called over a channel to the space port. ‘What is our status?’

‘The last of the heavy lifters has departed, lord commander,’ Tactical Legionary Maraeus Orasus answered. He was the vox-operator for his squad, one of those detached to oversee the exodus from Corcyra.

‘Have any further refugees reached the space port?’

‘None.’

Then the evacuation was complete. The human population of Corcyra was in orbit and beyond, fleeing the system while the XVIII held the attention of the orks.

‘All units,’ said Vaughn, ‘our mission is complete.’ Only this should never have been our mission. We are forced to consider total retreat a victory. ‘Pull back to the space port.’

‘Lord commander,’ said Orasus, ‘shells have begun to fall on the city.’

Vaughn bit back a curse. ‘From what direction?’

‘From everywhere but the east. They are encircling Sybota.’

We barely slowed them, Vaughn thought. There were so many greenskins, they were pouring over the mountain peaks like a wind-borne plague. ‘All possible speed to the space port,’ he ordered the Legion. ‘Cannons, keep firing on the advance of the foe. We have only a short time to depart. Our duty on Corcyra is complete, but our war is not.’

It never will be, he thought. Not until the last of us lies dead. He no longer imagined an end to the struggle that saw the orks destroyed. Every strategy he used now would do nothing more than gain the XVIII a bit of time.

Ethnarch’s Doom’s engine rumbled into a higher pitch as Legionary Blasius turned the Fellblade around. Vaughn’s perspective did not change as, inside the tank, gunner Caelius swung the turret through one hundred and eighty degrees. Caelius fired the Fellblade’s twin-linked accelerator cannons. From one barrel came a high-explosive shell designed to turn infantry into bloody mist. From the other came an armour-piercing projectile that could smash the strongest walls. The double punch of the Doom’s accelerators could lay an army to waste. Caelius kept sending out its wrath, cutting through the bombardment to unseen targets.

‘They’re dying out there,’ Caelius shouted into the vox. The tumult of the barrage was so constant, so omnipresent, that there was no other way to communicate, even for crews in a single tank. ‘We punish them for every step they take.’

‘That we do, legionary,’ Vaughn answered. Not enough of them die. Not nearly enough. But we can punish them all the same.

The ranks of heavy armour retreated from the pass. The bombardment followed. There was no respite from the pounding explosions. The craters slowed the formation down as the tanks crawled in and out of them. Now and then, Vaughn made out the flash of ork guns, sometimes from elevated positions, sometimes advancing through the pass. The enemy was closer yet. He could almost imagine he heard the snarl of the infantry. Perhaps he was not imagining it at all. The greenskins would not hesitate to rush through their own bombardment in their eagerness to engage with their foe.

It took Vaughn several attempts to pierce the static and reach Shipmaster Vathea Resalt aboard the battleship Klostzatz. ‘We are done here, shipmaster,’ he said when he got through.

‘So I surmised, lord commander. The captain of that lifter is boasting about being the last to leave Corcyra.’

How very brave of him, Vaughn thought. But in the next instant, he felt a surge of relief. Bravado was a good sign. That meant the ship of civilians had cleared the atmosphere and was out of immediate danger. His delaying action against the orks had succeeded.

All that remained now was for the Legion to escape extinction.

And then fight again.

‘I have sent all transports to Sybota, lord commander,’ Resalt said.

‘Thank you, shipmaster. It is time for us to leave.’

Sybota was on fire as the XVIII Legion reached the space port. What little discipline the orks had demonstrated with their bombardment of the mountain pass had vanished, and their guns were now firing indiscriminately, every tower of the city an inviting target. The hordes closing in from north and south had broken through the walls. The entire city was within range of the artillery, and the greenskins’ infantry were rampaging through the streets. In the wide ferrocrete expanse of the space port’s launching pads, the wind quickly blew away the smoke and dust of the shell impacts, and Vaughn looked up into a sky reddened by the conflagrations and the bloody streaks of falling shells. From a way off came a roar like the pounding of surf, its note of savagery becoming clearer as the tide approached. A hundred thousand guttural cries made that roar.

‘This is a poor spectacle of victory,’ Vaughn admitted to Numeon. Now that there was no more action to take on Corcyra, Vaughn felt free to express his frustrations privately with his friend.

They stood on the vast rockcrete apron of the space port, before the regiments of legionaries awaiting evacuation. The shadow of the abandoned control tower fell over them. Smoke drifted upwards from shell holes in the walls, shrouding the tower. The air over the apron was sharp with expended fuel. Heavy lifters had already taken most of the tanks off-planet. Squadrons of Stormbirds were transporting the Legiones Astartes to the fleet waiting at low anchor.

‘It is an empty spectacle,’ said Numeon. ‘The greenskins are wasting their energy. There is nothing left here for them to kill. We did kill many.’

‘We always kill many. We will kill many more. And they will keep coming. They will not stop at the Taras Division.’

There was an eruption of fire a few kilometres from the outskirts of the space port. Stormbirds were making strafing runs over the approaching orks.

‘Not much time,’ said Numeon.

Vaughn eyed the remaining ranks of legionaries. ‘Time enough.’ Even as the flight of gunships departed, he could see another angling in from the north-west. This would be the last. ‘We are done here,’ he said. ‘Now we depart to fight and hold them. Again.’

‘As we did for Sybota.’

‘You still have a taste for irony, Artellus. Well done.’

Numeon grunted. ‘We’re always holding them back, aren’t we? We cannot advance. Whether we like it or not, we are losing ground.’

‘We are.’

‘And when they move to the Taras System?’

Vaughn shook his head. There could not be another evacuation. The populations of the Taras worlds were too large. There was no way for any fleet to get so many billions away, and there was nowhere for them to go.

There were sudden flashes high in the sky. Small, distant, but bright: the flares of combat in the void.

‘Lord commander,’ Resalt voxed, ‘there’s a ship incoming to your position.’

‘They’re attempting a landing?’ Vaughn asked in disbelief.

‘Not a landing,’ said Resalt. ‘We’ve crippled them. They’re turning their ship into an orbital bomb.’

The squadron of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks, the last that would be needed, was almost there.

‘End strafing runs,’ Vaughn ordered. ‘All aircraft not involved in transport, make for orbit.’

One of the flares in the sky grew brighter.

The gunships came in, their ramps slamming down even before they had fully landed.

‘On board now!’ Vaughn cried, and the legionaries stormed up the ramps. Vaughn waited until the end, heading for the Stormbird Stoic with Numeon. He looked up as he boarded. The bright flare was a constant, becoming blinding, becoming flame, becoming a solid object.

‘Go!’ Vaughn was shouting, barely conscious that he was doing so.

The order was unnecessary. The gunships were taking off. The space port shook with the roar of a dozen gunship engines screaming for speed and height.

‘Go!’ Vaughn shouted again, as if his command could urge the aircraft to greater velocity.

The deck heaved under his feet as Stoic thundered upwards. He snatched at the grav-web and pulled himself against the bulkhead, strapping himself in. ‘Wide dispersal,’ he ordered. ‘Pull away from the space port. Get out of the target zone.’

The fire in the sky drew closer still. Stoic raced on a diagonal path away from the coming apocalypse. Its engines shrieked with strain. The fireball filled Vaughn’s vision, a misshapen, monstrous, grotesquery of a ship. It should never have flown, it should never have been voidworthy, and now it was conceding to the impossibility of its design and was coming to earth, trailing fire, hungry for its final immolation.

It glowed with the heat of re-entry.

Stoic streaked away and the ship dropped past it. The hulk clipped the Thunderhawks Resilience and Unbroken and the Stormbird Flamebringer, shearing off wings and tails. The gunships tumbled, out of control, gravity pulling them back to follow the ork monster to its doom.

The hulk smashed into the space port. The fireball engulfed entire square kilometres of the city. Towers vanished beneath the huge sea of flame. The shock wave chased Stoic, then overtook it. A monstrous fist shook the gunship. The hull groaned. The craft struggled to maintain its momentum, and for several seconds its speed bled away. But it survived the blow and kept climbing through an atmosphere wracked by turbulent fire.

Vaughn gazed down through the viewing block at the destruction below. The stricken gunships had vanished in the holocaust. More men gone, his Legion diminished again, and for what?

‘This is what we have died for,’ he said to Numeon.

The fireball was dimming from incandescence to an angry red. The shattered spires of Sybota stuck out of the flames like the splinters of a huge beast’s skeleton.

‘We did save the population,’ Numeon said.

‘You know we didn’t. We only delayed their destruction.’

Numeon said nothing for a moment. ‘You truly believe we cannot win?’

It was Vaughn’s turn to pause. The answer to Numeon’s question was obvious, but to speak it would be too shameful. ‘We can fight,’ he said, as if that were a sufficient answer. ‘We will fight.’

Outside the Stormbird, the air was growing dark as the gunship passed through the upper atmosphere. The battle in low orbit came into focus. The disciplined broadsides of the XVIII’s ships slashed through the poorly constructed ork vessels. Greenskin fire flashed fruitlessly back against flaring void shields.

‘We have a free hand now,’ Vaughn said, glimpsing hope. ‘There are no worlds to defend. We can throw everything into keeping the orks here, away from the Taras System.’

Vaughn held on to that hope as the gunships of the XVIII left Corcyra behind. They made for the Klostzatz. The battleship was surrounded by much smaller ork attackers. The greenskins’ ships did not have the firepower to pierce the Imperial vessel’s void shields, and they were trying to ram the Klostzatz instead. Shipmaster Resalt was holding them back with dense defensive firepower. Converging lance and cannon fire forward of the battleship had cleared enemy ships from the immediate region of the bow, opening the way for the returning gunships.

Numeon said, ‘What about their attack moon?’ The term designated the immense accretion of planetoids and ruined ships at the centre of the ork fleet. The construction was as monstrous as it was primitive. It looked like a frozen collision, a mad fusion of wrecks that should have destroyed each other but had instead cohered. It was grotesque, more gargoyle than vessel, a physical expression of the greenskins’ relentless savagery. ‘Can we keep it in the Anteros System if they decide to take it elsewhere?’ Numeon asked.

‘We have to change the orks’ minds,’ said Vaughn. ‘They must prefer to remain here, at war with a true enemy. We will be the irresistible challenge.’

The landing bays of the Klostzatz opened to receive the gunships. The Stormbirds made short work of the ork fighters that sought to interfere with their return to the battleship. One on one, the ork craft were helpless before the Imperium’s technology of war. They needed overwhelming numbers to tilt the battle in their favour, and for now, Resalt had succeeded in carving out a space for her vessel.

By the time Vaughn had disembarked and made his way to the bridge, accompanied by Numeon, the attack moon was looming large in the primary oculus. The ork base had been in close orbit of Corcyra, its mere presence enough to change the world’s tides. Resalt had moved what still remained of the XVIII’s fleet away from it, to a position on the other side of Corcyra’s moon. Now the monster was moving again, as if the orks had tired of the invasion as soon as their worthy foes had left. The rest of the ork ships moved with it, insects swarming around a leviathan. The strike cruiser Khalkeus was silhouetted against the attack moon as it manoeuvred back towards the battleship.

‘Lord commander,’ Resalt greeted him. Dark-skinned, her head clean-shaven, she had held command of the battleship for the length of the Great Crusade. Vaughn found it easier to imagine the bridge shorn of its oculus and its control surfaces than without its formidable shipmaster. ‘As you can see, our position is becoming untenable.’

‘And we have no need to hold it any longer, shipmaster. Take us out. Contact the Khalkeus. We draw the orks back to the worlds they have already burned. We’ll have them chasing…’

He trailed off, staring at the oculus. Resalt followed his gaze. At the same moment, the bridge’s vox crackled with the voice of Captain Gerhardt Vallorn aboard the Khalkeus.

A huge wave of ork vessels had whipped out around their base like the spiral arm of a galaxy. Now they rushed towards the strike cruiser, a storm of metal and xenos hate. The orks’ guns were still no match for the Khalkeus, but its void shields were strained to the limit as hundreds of shells pounded against them. The vessel was surrounded by a violent aura. The enemy ships came on at ramming speed.

The first ones hit. They were smaller than the majestic Imperial vessel, but they broke through its overburdened void shields, slamming hard into the hull. The strike cruiser blazed with counter-fire, turning one ork ship after another into clouds of burning fuel and dissipating shrapnel. Still the orks came on with a suicidal singleness of purpose, as though they were the unthinking limb of the attack moon.

As the swarm closed around the Khalkeus, the outer edge of the arm reached towards the Klostzatz. Resalt directed covering fire towards the strike cruiser. More ork ships exploded, and the void was no longer black. It was a boiling, burning, convulsing tempest.

The ork base drew nearer. Even though the Khalkeus continued to make for the Klostzatz, it seemed to grow smaller and smaller as the base expanded, becoming the only world in the oculus’ universe of flame.

The frigate Guardian of Flame was the first to go. The largest of the ork hulks were almost its equal in size. Its hull withstood several collisions, and then a brutish fist of a shape, all reinforced prow and engine, cut it in half. The huge ram kept going, leaking atmosphere and flame. It was badly damaged, but still it hunted. It went straight on at the Khalkeus and struck at the same instant as two other, smaller ram ships. They broke through the void shields again just as the strike cruiser’s defences were coming back online. The big ship punched through the Khalkeus’ starboard flank and exploded, a torpedo half a kilometre long.

Amidships of the strike cruiser, flame blossomed. Cracks, shining white with heat, spread along the hull. The Khalkeus was still moving forwards, still heading for the Klostzatz, but its course had been knocked off true.

Vallorn’s crew managed to restore vox communications, which had momentarily been consumed by static. ‘We’ve lost steering,’ the captain said, his voice ragged with pain. ‘Engines are not responding. Readings say they’re going–’

A savage dawn tore through the void and cut him off once more. The Khalkeus became its own pyre. The conflagration swallowed a score of ork ships, but hundreds more raced through the flames, charging like hungry carnivores towards their next prey. Behind them, the attack moon advanced. Its gravity pulled the destroyed greenskin and Imperial ships to its surface. Their wreckage punched craters on impact but did nothing more than scar the face of the xenos beast, rendering its image even more brutal.

‘Take us out,’ Vaughn ordered.

Another retreat. Again, there was no choice. Any reason to fight in the Anteros System had evaporated. The orks controlled it. The only hope now was to find a new, more favourable battlefield.

The Klostzatz hummed as its engines accelerated. The prow turned away from the attack moon and pointed towards the system’s Mandeville point.

‘Take us to Taras,’ Vaughn said. ‘Take us to Taras, and we’ll burn them there.’

He turned away from the pulpit overlooking the bridge and stood over the tacticarium table. He did not have to stare at the shameful sight of the new retreat. He trusted Resalt to do as he had commanded. She knew the ship and its capabilities better than he did. If it was possible to escape from the orks, she would do so without his interference.

As the ork cannons and the fastest of their ships struck the Klostzatz’s void shields, and the hull began to quake, Vaughn stared at the star chart of the Taras System. He would find the battlefield. He would strip the initiative from the orks. He would set the terms of the next battle.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Sons of the Emperor: An Anthology in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mikhail Savier.

Mercy of the Dragon © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Mercy of the Dragon, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-615-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.