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The Life of Jethras the Martyr - Nate Crowley

Bonus Materials

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Twice-dead King: Ruin’

A Black Library Publication

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Nate Crowley

I

I don't know the name of this ship that carries me to war, and it don't know mine either. But it's good to me, all the same. I've a bunk to myself, a quart of aqua to wash with every second day, and a full ration of real vegetables - tallowroots, lamp-grown down in the sump - to space out the grave-bread every third. There's even respite from work here! Once a month, my deck's spared a shift on the hauling-chains down below, and given the luxury of silent prayer instead. I spend every moment of those days thanking the Emperor for all I've been given.

Life wasn't always this good. Hive Mulciber, where I grew up, was a hard place. I don't know the name of the world it was built on, but it barely matters. The hive was a world in itself, and I have never missed it for a moment. The famine was biting hard when the pilgrimage lottery was announced, and though it's said more than a billion men entered, only ten thousand were granted passage off-world. And I was one of'em.

I was a boy then, and the crusade I'd signed up for meant little to me. All that mattered to me then was that I'd got out from between hunger's teeth. But the years made me wise. And many have passed, 'tween then and now. It took two just for our Jericho-boat to reach the muster point, and they were worse years than any on Mulciber. The boat'd been a refinery ship once, and it still carried invisible poison in its bones. Every pilgrim went bald in the first month aboard, even with the blessed tinctures the preachers gave us, and we all got sick. When we finally reached the orbital where the crusade was gathering, there was only six thousand of us left, from the ten that had set out. But once more, I was one of'em. And I know who to thank for that.

That orbital was a cold place to spend seventeen years. I lost track of the days soon enough, but my old spire-mate Izad, who's just about the only person left in my life from before the pilgrimage, kept count throughout. He's a clever man, is Izad. Probably the cleverest I know. But it does him few favours - all that brain gets in the way of his faith. I'm less challenged in that fashion, so I just said my prayers each day, laboured hard, and trusted to the Throne that it'd stop at last. And so it did. A grey little Munitorum man appeared in our hub one shift, with a grey little slate, and told us - like it were nothing at all - that the crusade of Saint Damiane was outbound at last. Izad insists you can't hear things through the void, but I know the Emperor heard the cheer that went up through the hub that day, and I reckon it was music in His divine ear.

That was five hundred shifts ago, and since then I've lived here, on this ship Izad reckons is nearly as big as Mulciber itself. I ain't seen void since we came aboard, since we pilgrims billet way down in the ship's substegarium. But I know it's there. And at the end of each shift, I gather my gurtt-wool blanket to my chin, and imagine it rushing past outside. Then I drift asleep to the growling of the engines, and I always drift off happy. 'Cos I know that while I sleep, the Emperor won't rest in steering us towards the foe, and when I wake, I'll be a day closer to that blessed moment where I can finally make my sacrifice to Him.

II

I wake early, like I know something special's going to happen. There's fifty-nine other men bunked in the cabin, and every one of 'em's still asleep. They make little puffs of vapour in the cold that seeps in during the off-shift, but there's nothing stirring except me and the ship-lice.

I start my morning prayer by thumbing the tin aquila that's hung around my neck since I left Mulciber, and thanking the Emperor for the peace of the moment. Then, even though Aleksas, our deck's preacher, says you don't ask the Throne for nothing, I at least let the Emperor know I'm ready for the peace to end. I've rubbed that aquila's beaks to nubs over the years of wishing for war, but I have to be patient. So I fish for the second of the three icons around my neck - a fresh-cast emblem of Saint Damiane, like every pilgrim got given when we came on board. Saint Damiane's the saint of endurance, and the patroness of sieges, and Aleksas says I can ask things of her. So I ask for the patience to wait another shift.

Finally, I run my thumb over the little carved figurine of the Wooden Man, who was the god of my birth-world, before the Emperor brought it back into the light. I think they're one and the same; the Wooden Man's just the shape the Emperor took to watch over us while we were in the dark. But I still keep the figurine hidden, 'cos a lot of the men here are from other worlds, and I don't want 'em to think I'm a heretic. Old gods are best kept private, so usually I don't say nothing to the Wooden Man at all. But today, I tell him to make the ship go faster.

And right as I do, the 'lectrics come on, a full half-turn of the glass before they're meant to, and there's Aleksas himself at the cabin door, with a fire in his eyes I've not seen before. He's yelling at us all to get up, and as the pilgrims peel back the blankets, the cabin fills up with the smell of sweat and worn air. Those men with belongings of their own don't have any time to pack 'em. But I'm lucky again, 'cos all I own are those three icons around my neck, and I thank the Emperor for all those who've thieved off me over the years, as it means I'm first to the door now.

Izad's next, groggily asking the preacher what's going on, but Aleksas won't say - he just smiles that strange crooked smile of his, and gestures on for us to follow. There's vox barking all down the corridor, and the slapping of feet on metal from every cabin as pilgrims flood out to follow the call. By the time we get to the transit station, there must be a thousand or more of us.

We pile into the sooty old carriages, like we do every day on the way to the chains. But this time we rattle off in a new direction, through the cold guts of the ship to a place we've never seen. The journey takes a full quarter-turn of the glass, and when we arrive, Preacher Aleksas speaks to me, saying our patience has been rewarded at last. But I can't find the words to answer him, 'cos I'm too busy staring at the Sister who's standing guard on the platform.

* * *

III

She's the most astonishing thing I've ever seen. She's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. She can't be more than a head taller than any of us, but in her bright red armour, she seems like something more than human - like something that shouldn't be able to exist in the same world as us. Her skin's dark and smooth above her respirator, and even the twisting scar that carves through one white eye has more grace to it than all our grey, flaking hides put together. And then I look over at her good eye, and I see she's looking right at me.

I lock up in panic, but the crowd pushes me on, and I come to my senses. Even so, I try to crane my head around for another look. But Izad grabs my tunic and yanks me forward, and all I'm left with is the faintest whiff of promethium and ceramite polish, like the echo of a blessing. But I forget even that, when the bulkhead opens in front of us.

The space is so big, I think we must've just walked out into the void at first. But it's a room - a room so high it's got sky instead of a ceiling, with clouds in it and all. I watch as servo-skulls carve little channels through 'em, censers swinging to release more sweet smoke. Then I look down, and I see the other pilgrims. There must be millions of 'em, from who knows how many worlds. But every last one's got the same black aquila printed across the hessian on their back. I look at that mass of faith, and I wonder how anything'll ever stand against us.

A whisper of awe passes over the pilgrims, like the sizzle of acid rain on my old hab-spire's windows, and Izad points me at where I should be looking. Arcing out over the crowd there's a golden lectern, and on top of it, flanked by two more Sisters, is a man who'd be even taller, if he weren't stooped under the weight of a giant iron hat. A mitre - that's what it is. And so he has to be… the Pontifex Astra! Aleksas has tears in his eyes at the sight, and like every other pilgrim on that cavernous deck, I raise my aquila to my lips.

The Pontifex is talking into a vox, but it's too crackly and distant to hear properly - even Aleksas, who can usually hear the munching of a pilfered loaf from four cabins away, can't make it out. But then the crowd nearer the lectern starts to repeat his words, and I know the rhythm of 'em like I know my heartbeat, since they're the tenets of the Creed, read out in Low Gothic so we can understand. When the recitation reaches back to where we're standing, it's got to the tenet of circumspection, and my shout of abhor the alien! comes out as part of a roar so loud I can't even hear the bit that's coming from me. It makes my heart surge, and that's when I know it - this is the day it happens.

And just as I think that, the whole of the big wall behind the Pontifex just goes away, and there's only stars and dark behind. Groups of pilgrims cry out in fear all over, as they think we're being spaced. But they should have more faith! That's technology, that is, letting us see through steel. I'm just starting to wonder what we're meant to be looking at, though, when the stars start moving.

IV

Those ain't stars, though. They're windows. On a ship. It's got to be twice the size of Mulciber spire. It could be a hundred times bigger, for all I know - it's so huge, it just won't fit in my head all at once. Then I see there are other ships around it, looking small as toys, and I feel dizzy. If I weren't so certain of its righteousness, the thought of a machine that big would have scared me half to death.

The windows keep drifting by, and Izad reckons we must be moving up alongside it. Soon, something so bright it hurts to look at is coming into view, and I'm squinting to make out what it is, when the whoosh of pilgrims falling to their knees rolls over me. I'm grateful for Aleksas' iron-hard hand pushing me down then, as it's a dangerous thing, being the last man to kneel.

Once I'm down, I get a glimpse of the brightness between the shoulders of the pilgrims in front, and I need to look twice to believe it. It's an aquila, mounted right on the front of the ship, and each of its beaked heads must be bigger'n a hab-block. I can't read the writing on the white armour-plate beneath, but I can see the saints embossed in gold, striding all along the prow. And leading 'em all, so tall she could step over a mountain in a single stride, is Saint Damiane.

This is the holy ship, then - the Polyphemus, that Aleksas has dreamed of seeing so often. Which means that aquila bears inside it the bones of Damiane herself! I look down at the deck then, in case looking any longer burns my eyes, and thank the Emperor that I should be alive to see such wonders.

A new voice comes booming over us all then, much louder'n the Pontifex, and at the sound of it even the man himself takes a knee. It's rich and deep and ancient-sounding, and though it's got to be a human voice, I can't help feeling it's the voice of the Polyphemus itself, thundering over at us through the black.

The voice talks High Gothic, which I don't know, but Izad does. A bit, anyway. He can't read any better than the rest of us, but when he left home he took a child's recitation-engine with him, loaded with a talking-tape of the Lives of the Saints. He's listened to that tape so often that it's no more'n crackles now, but by the look of shock on his face, it seems that whatever the tape lost in words, he's gained.

Izad goes dead pale as he tells me what he's learned. But to me, the words are nectar. As we've toiled and prayed and waited, the ships of the crusade ain't just been travelling - they've been carving their way through a xenos empire! And now, its rotten heart lies just one warp jump ahead, open to the Emperor's sword. But the tip of the blade won't be the Ministorum, the Militarum, the Sororitas or even the legendary Astartes. It'll be us.

V

The chamber where we heard the Pontifex was the biggest space I'd ever been in. But I hadn't seen the main hangar, then. It looks like it goes on forever, with two-hundred-man transports lined up along the deck till they're just specks in the distance. Their engines are all lit up, howling together in their own, furious hymn, and every few seconds, one speeds up towards the city-high arches at the deck's edge. Towards the battle.

A droning sound comes down from up above in big slow pulses, and it's so deep it makes the insides of my ears itch, and the base of my chest throb. A shadow passes over us, and I look up to see a blunt slab of green metal, painted all over with sacred symbols, cruising right overhead. It's a transport sure enough, but it's colossal: big enough to carry thousands of soldiers, maybe even tanks too. And it's come from inside the guts of the ship.

There's a group of Militarum on a platform up ahead - a squad of soldiers and a man with a face like ripped leather, bellowing into a loudhailer as he fights to be heard above the engines of the transports. They're surrounded by a jostling mob of pilgrims, fifty deep, and at first I think there's some sort of rousing speech being given, till I see the lasguns being pulled from the rusted crates behind the soldiers. Each one gets swallowed instantly by the sea of hands reaching up, and before we've even got near, they're out of guns and only handing out charge clips. Izad's face is like ash, and I worry for his spiritual health. As Aleksas' whistle pierces the engine-racket up ahead to hurry us to our transport, I do my best to pull Izad out of his craven state. A gun means next to nothing, I remind him, brandishing my protective icons on their three greasy thongs, when it's weighed up against faith. We have all the weapons we need.

Then we're being herded up the ramp of an assault lander, and as the pilgrims behind me start shoving to get aboard, I lose my footing. When I get my balance back I've lost Izad, and I've been bullied across the hold till I'm crushed right against the inside of the hull. But even in this, the Emperor has favoured me. Next to my face is a tiny viewport, half caked over with grime but still see-through. And through it, after the transport finally goes thundering out from the hangar, I see… pure glory. It's war, at last. And it fills up the whole of the heavens, as the whole of the crusade comes crashing down on the enemy. The fury of it all - the size of it all - is beyond me, and I'm nearly afraid, till I remember the old litany: seek not understanding, where awe will suffice.

The transport shudders so violently, and so suddenly, that my head cracks against the viewport, just as the hold lights go out all at once. By the angry flicker of the cannon fire outside, all I can see is the eyes of my fellow pilgrims, wide with fear as the lander drops into a hard, plummeting turn. The men start to void their stomachs, till the sour smell of vomit seems as thick as the stuff itself in the sweltering hold. But calm floods through me as I grip my three icons in turn, and I ain't sick. I do not die here, I repeat to myself. I do not die yet. I do not die for nothing.

I'm going to die there, I think, as the lander tilts, and a terrible yellow curve swings into view outside. And I'll die with praise on my lips.

VI

As we fall down towards the sick-looking world, I see dozens of transports flying ahead, and feel a swell of selfish shame that they'll get to spill xenos blood before I do. But then, something fast and black passes across between 'em, there's a flicker of green light, and the transports are gone. In their place, there's just specks of dust.

But they ain't specks - they're just far away. And as we hurtle down into the wreckage, and the hull booms with the first impact, I realise what they are. Bodies, I think, just as something soft and heavy bursts against the viewport, coating it with red mush that freezes solid straight away. Crumpled up in the red is a shred of rough cloth, dyed with the symbol of the aquila. After that, I don't want to look at it again.

The hold's dark and reeks of vomit, and it feels like we're falling and accelerating forwards all at once. When fire begins to lick at the edge of the frozen mass on the viewport beside me, I wonder if we've been shot down, till the truth reveals itself - it's a miracle, of course! The Emperor has sent His cleansing flame to scour the flesh, as a reminder that I shouldn't shy away from suffering and death. And it ain't just a purifying flame, but a flame of wrath. I can see the fire roaring across the other viewports now, lighting the hold again, and I know that it'll be sheathing the whole of our lander in fury as we come down through the sky.

I can't fathom what wretched shape the xenos below might take. Like any good citizen, I've always shunned knowledge of all that ain't human. But I know one thing about 'em now, as surely as if it were carved on my bones. Whatever they are, they'll be terrified at our coming.

And now, suddenly, we've arrived. With a stinking billow of coolant, the lander's aft ramp cracks its seals and begins to lower, even before we've touched the ground. As the back of the boat opens itself to the heathen world, I expect to see some dismal landscape filled with hideous, slimy things. But all I can see is light. A slim crack of gold at first, that gets brighter and brighter as the ramp descends, till I'm forced to hold my hand in front of my face.

A final, juddering thump tells me we're landed, and Preacher Aleksas doesn't hesitate - barging pilgrims aside with a physique fed on real meat ever since we left Mulciber, he rushes to the very lip of the ramp, roaring scripture into the false light, and raising his iron emblem of the saint to signal our charge.

I start shoving forwards, in the vain hope of being the first to follow him out. But before I can make it past the pilgrims in front, the light's turned from gold to green. It gets even brighter, till it's like a spirestorm's worth of lightning striking all in one go, and to my shame I cry out with pain, and have to screw my eyes shut. Then there's a deep, hollow hissing sound, and nothing more.

When at last I open my eyes, watering from the pain of the light, the green's gone. But so's Preacher Aleksas. And so are all the pilgrims, from the lip of the ramp right back to the new hole that's letting light in through the front of the transport. Where three hundred men stood, there's just ash now, blowing away on a hot wind.

VII

If this weapon's meant to make me feel afraid, it ain't worked. The other survivors - there's maybe eighty of 'em, all packed in at the hold's edges like I was - are just standing there like lobo-cattle, like they don't know what to do. Izad's among 'em, and I'm ashamed for him. 'Cos for me, it couldn't be simpler. After stooping to pick up a rifle from the ash-drift, I charge for the ramp, and I shout out the name of Saint Damiane in raw, joyful pride.

For those nineteen damned years I spent waiting in cold barracks for this day, I must have said the Imperial Creed over and over, a million times. These men did too. So they can quail all they like, but they should know better. 'Cos I know that somewhere out there, there are aliens, and I fully intend to abhor 'em. Even if I do so alone.

When my boots touch the ground, I feel the sand burning my foot where one sole's worn away. The air's just as hot, and smells like burned metal. And there's smoke everywhere, coming up in thick clouds from mounds and mounds of wreckage. It blows across me, giving me some relief from the blinding sun, but making me cough my lungs out. My eyes stream with stinging tears, and I squint out into the blackness and the brightness. Where are the xenos? And for that matter, where are the pilgrims from the other transports?

But of course, the piles of wreckage are the other transports. Clearly, none of 'em proved worthy of this honour, in the eyes of the Throne. But my patience, my courage and my faith've been rewarded: I have been a loyal son to the Master of Mankind, and He has permitted my feet to be the first to disturb the ground of an alien world. I am the point of the sword.

I throw my arms out and laugh for the first time in years, overcome with ecstasy. I invite the green light to come and send me to the light of the Throne above, 'cos it can do me no harm now, beyond killing me. I have been given a greater honour than most men could earn in a thousand lives, and I'd happily embrace death now. But since it won't come, I resolve to keep running forward till either I find it, or I deliver it to the heathen.

As my feet slap faster and faster on the baking sand, a great booming ship's horn sounds up above. Some pilot's seen me through the smoke, and they're putting out the word that the ground assault's begun in earnest. It is… a salutation, I think the word is, and as the horn's call spreads out over the sky, a hundred more ships carry it on. It makes me feel like I'm as light as I was in the famine years, only this time with the strength to walk, and to run. 'Cos I've begun the work of reclaiming this world for the Throne, and the whole host of humanity is coming down behind me, to see the will of the Emperor done.

VIII

I run for a long time, seeing nothing but smoke. But at some point, the sparks from the burning transports turn from amber to green, and I become aware that they ain't natural. The green sparks are… eyes, maybe? And they're attached to little disc-like, silvery outlines with flickery limbs, that whirr and sizzle as they zip past me. They look, for all the worlds, like ship-lice.

So this is what we are faced with - iron insects? I'm almost disappointed. Before thinking any further, though, I fire my weapon at 'em. I've never shot a lasgun before, and it takes me a moment to find the trigger. It just clicks when I pull it, though, and the barrel flashes once like a fast-fading torch. There's only one other control; a slider on the side, that looks like it's for changing the power of the rifle. So I mumble the only lay-canticle I know, to appease its machine-spirit, and push the slider all the way forward.

It works! My next shot fires a beam of searing, righteous blue, and while it misses every one of the swarm of beetle-things, it still feels good to have a gun at last. I aim my next shot more carefully, peering down the top of the weapon, and I know the Emperor will guide my aim this time. But when I pull the trigger, there's only an angry rush of gas, and the weapon's grip turns red-hot. I drop it in shock, and the clip explodes as it hits the ground, spraying my leg with specks of molten plastek. I know that's the Throne reminding me of what I told Izad in the hangar - that I don't need a gun - and I'm thankful the lesson's only burned my hand. Then the screaming starts up behind me.

The surviving pilgrims, who've decided to advance at last along with new arrivals from other transports, are getting chewed apart by the iron insects. Through the murk I see the green embers settling on 'em in clusters, and each man who emerges from the smoke is in the middle of dying horribly. I see one fall to his knees, reaching for the air with a look of shock as a silver body burrows straight into his chest. A Ministorum missionary turns to offer a sermon of encouragement to the stragglers, but he's cut off mid-word as a disc of razor limbs clamps on to his face. He tries to prise it off, but his tunic's already drenched in blood, and his body goes limp.

I turn away from the carnage. Not 'cos it sickens me, but 'cos I've more important work to do. The Emperor needs us to take this world for Him, and whatever role I play, I must be implacable in carrying out His will. I run on into the smoke.

IX

I find myself running down into a deep crater in the sand, with what looks like a pillar of black rock in the middle. But as I lean on the stone to regain my breath, I look up and think about how rocks don't have engines, but this thing does. It's a voidcraft, and it's xenos. I spring away from the wreck in disgust, and ready myself to run on immediately, with or without my breath.

But a hoarse, manic shout comes from the haze behind me, and Izad comes staggering down into the crater, tunic soaked with blood where one of the insect things chewed through it. Behind him there's a dozen or so wounded pilgrims. He's begging me to wait, in between hacking coughs - he says I'm going to get myself killed needlessly, and urges that if I only wait a minute, the whole hammer of the crusade will strike alongside me.

As more foul chemical smoke drifts across us, he breaks into terrible spluttering, so he points to the sky behind us, to make the rest of his point. Between the smoke columns, I see the shape of one of the Militarum's massive landers drifting this way like an iron cloud, coming in to deliver thousands of tons of men and armour.

The sight of the lander fills me with pride, but it does nothing to sway my resolve. Weak though I might be, I'm just as much the Emperor's implement as a column of mighty battle tanks. He has kept me alive this far, and so he I know He intends to make use of me still - to stop now, and wait for others to advance in my stead, would be to ignore His divine calling. So I shake my head, bid Izad farewell, and start climbing the crater again, on the enemy's side.

As I scrabble up the hot sand, my friend begs me to stay, but then his shouts get drowned out by cries of alarm from the other pilgrims. I look back, and see they're pointing in horror at the side of the xenos wreck. Whatever's revealed itself to 'em is hidden from me, but I see the green light reflected on their faces, well enough to know the Emperor approves of my decision to leave. As I turn away for the last time, I hear a weird clanging, like iron feet walking on cold stone, and then the hollow, rushing sound of the green light. Then there's no more voices.

I know I'm getting close to where I need to be now. And to spur me on, the Throne sends a gust of wind to part the clouds ahead, for just a moment. The veil lifts, and I see behind it a towering black wall, high as a cliff face, and alive with flickers of that blasphemous green light. The castle of the xenos king, no doubt. And though I don't want to credit it with any praise at all, I'll at least say it's formidable. It looks as thick as a mountain - surely, it'll take a trillion las-shots to cut through. And I don't even have a lasgun. But the Emperor gave me two fists, and I won't spurn His gift.

I charge across the wastes towards the wall. Even when the wind blows harder, and whips away the last of the smoke to reveal a line of hunched, skeletal abominations awaiting me in murderous silence, I only quicken my pace.

X

Despite the bitter taste of the dust caking my mouth, and the chemical smoke scouring my lungs, I run at the heathen army faster and faster, like my breath'll never run short. There are hundreds of 'em, I see now, arrayed three ranks deep along this whole section of wall. I stare into the lifeless green coals of their eyes, goading 'em to shoot at me. But though they hold their terrible weapons ready, not one's trained on me. They ain't even looking at me as I come at 'em - their heads just stare on at nothing, like they can't see me at all. Or worse, like they don't think I'm worth seeing.

Righteous anger that I've been saving up through twenty miserable years of lice and grave-bread floods through my body, till it feels like the ground beneath my feet is shaking. As I will myself towards the guns of the xenos, I try to recall a battle-hymn, but my mind's gone empty. All I can remember is the Primarchiad, a simple child's litany from Mulciber about the virtues of nine ancient heroes, so I seize on its words to chant along with the rhythm of my stride.

Corvax the clever, Kan the cunning; Manus bold, Sanguinus stunning; Russ for strength, the Lion relentless, Dorn the master of defences, Vulkon's honour and his skill, Gullyman's wisdom and his will.

I don't know anything more about these great men, except for that they were dear to the Father of Mankind. I don't even rightly know if they were saints or not, but I pray they'll impart me with a fragment of their spirit. The trembling in the ground is even more pronounced now, and for a heartbeat, I wonder if it's the footsteps of the primarchs, as the giants of yore run at my enemies alongside me.

But for all the knowings that evade me about 'em, I can be fair certain the primarchs didn't make loud, fierce whistling sounds as they rained from the sky. But artillery shells do.

That shaking must've been the great guns of the Militarum firing. Ten thousand prayers of their own, thrown into the heavens, and now answering 'emselves in explosives and steel. One overshoots, and hits the blank face of the wall. Then another, splashing on some sort of invisible shield in the sky. But then three land at once, and whole sections of the xenos line just vanish in cones of violent black. When the sand rains back down from the blasts, the gaunt things to either side of the crater are still just staring straight ahead, like the destruction means nothing to 'em.

But those were just the testing shots, by the sounds of it. 'Cos now the whole of the sky is filled with the mournful howls of the shells, and—

There's a sound to my left so violently loud that it ain't really a sound at all. Then I can see the sand, rushing past to the side of me. Then it's below me again, and then it's in the sky, and there's an ocean of smoke beneath me with an alien sun at its bottom.

Then there's nothing at all.

XI

'What's your name?' says Saint Damiane, and it's been so long since anyone asked me that, I can't remember the answer at all. So I just lie there, with the saint's red armour swimming in and out of focus, and a terrible headache stalking round my skull, till it chases my name out of me.

'Jethras?' I say, as if it's a test, and as if the saint knows the answer. Maybe it is a test. I've never really thought about what happens after you die, so I suppose it's possible.

'Jethras… the implacable,' she says, in a voice that's precise as knives and rich as velvet, and which sounds like it ain't much used to giving praise. I'm only sorry I can only hear it in one ear, and even then only barely. 'I've seen you before.'

Now she says that, I realise the saint smells familiar. Like… promethium and ceramite polish. And as her face swims out from the blur that's swallowed the rest of the world, I see the thick scar cutting down across her left eye, and the steel-grey pupil of the other, looking at me with benign interest. I sit bolt upright, as I recognise the Sister from the transit station. Or at least, I try to. But it feels like I've had razor wire fed through one ear and out the other, and it's a strange, wild pain that makes my limbs thrash and my teeth clench. A gauntlet like a soothing anvil finds my shoulder, and pushes me back to the rags I've been propped on. I try to haul myself up again, gripped suddenly by the knowledge that I've got to reach the xenos line, but the gauntlet won't budge. It's a gentle pressure, but I feel like with the smallest extra squeeze, she could snap my shoulder blade in two. So I lie back.

I'm in some sort of field hospital, from what I can make out, set up in the shell of a downed aircraft. Around me, the ground's littered with folks stirring weakly in bandage shrouds, and others that ain't stirring at all, as Sisters and Militarum medics alike hurry between 'em. Burn victims. And the bad kind, too - the sort I used to see in the foundry-stacks back home, where the damage is so grim there's not even any screaming. It's dark outside, but I can still just make out the boom of artillery, and the hiss of the xenos weapons out in the distance.

'The xenos…' I begin, but my head feels so thick, I ain't truly sure what I'm asking.

'You are gravely injured, Jethras,' says the Sister. 'It has been a day since you fell. You suffered catastrophic barotrauma from exposure to an Earthshaker detonation, and your brain is bleeding in three places. In truth, Hospitaller Firmina was certain you would not wake at all, but it seems the Throne has blessed us with this conversation.'

'Will I live?' I ask, suddenly anxious for the first time in a long while.

'Certainly not,' replies the Sister, to my great relief, and I get the strangest feeling her respirator might be hiding the very edges of a smile. 'But you have an hour or so in you left, perhaps. And there are drugs that can allow you to fight to your last breath, should you wish.'

'But…' I begin, as questions shove at each other like pilgrims grasping for lasguns, '…why? Why… would you…' I wave a hand weakly over my ragged, filthy body, baffled as to why anyone would have dragged it from the sand in the first place, and lost at why such a holy warrior as this would take the time to speak with me.

'Because you are a martyr in the making, Jethras.'

XII

'You did not know, I suspect,' says the Sister, looking at me strangely, like she can't decide what to make of me. 'But there were many eyes on you just then, when you charged a necron crown capital alone, with nothing more than your bare hands. In that moment, you honoured the Emperor, the saint and the spirit of the crusade more succinctly than a forge world's worth of munitions, or a maniple of Titans, could have done. And so you will be honoured in turn.'

'No,' I say, suddenly aghast, 'I cannot accept th—'

'It is not yours to accept or refuse, Jethras,' she says, with a glimmer of steel in that grey eye. 'It is the will of the archdeacon, and thus the Ecclesiarchy, and you will be wise and pious in complying with it.'

'Of course,' I say, letting all doubt be driven away by the righteousness of submission. 'What would you have me do, Sister?'

She leans in then, and something cold and sharp slides into my neck. As it withdraws, so does the blurring in my vision, and I feel a sudden, strange rush of energy in my limbs.

'Count yourself fortunate, Jethras. For that is medicine the Hospitaller keeps aside for the Adeptus Astartes. Potent, indeed - enough that it would kill you stone dead after three hours. But that's no concern for you. Now, come.'

The Sister offers me her hand, and I haul myself up, feeling not just propped up through the worst of my wound, but… better. Lifted up beyond any health I've ever felt, in fact, at least since I got sick on the freighter out of Mulciber, anyway. I follow her between the rows of the wounded, and then we duck down under a jagged awning of torn metal, and emerge into what's either night, or a noon made just as dark by war.

The wall I'd run towards yesterday lies shattered, maybe half a mile away, while an even taller wall stands a mile in the other direction, ringed by the forces of the crusade. The army stretches from the wall's edge, nearly all the way out here to the field hospital. And there's fire everywhere. Great pools of molten liquid, licked at their edges by cruel, hungry yellow flames.

'A magma bomb barrage,' explains the Sister, before I can ask. 'Conducted by our resplendent brothers, the Angels Encarmine, and bringing the xenos stronghold to within a hair's breadth of falling. And now their last gate is about to be broken, and we believe their king lies wounded atop a structure beyond.'

I listen to all of it, but I can't move my mind past 'Angels Encarmine'.

'Space Marines?' I wheeze, unable to hold back the same awe that must have plastered my face the first time she met me.

'Of course,' says the Sister, nonplussed. 'And here they come now.'

She points up with one red gauntlet, and I make the sign of the aquila as I behold gods descending.

XIII

They're like little angry stars at first, all in a line above the horizon to our left. But as they flare brighter and sink lower, I can just make out compact, red-and-black shapes streaking towards us. Drop pods! Awe grips me, and I want to cry out in exultation at the sight. But the medicine she's given me makes me think clearer than I usually do, and I'm puzzled.

'With great respect, Sister…' I say cautiously, 'and though I'll pledge the last of my life with joy regardless, I can't see why you'd be after the help of a pilgrim with a bleeding mind, when you've the Angels here themselves to break what remains of the city.'

'They will be sufficient, I'm sure,' says the Sister, with that strange wry tone in her voice again. 'Captain Profugus of the Second Company is inbound now in one of those very pods, to command the breaching of the gate. But for all that the Astartes inspire the citizenry, Jethras, the Ministorum values a champion who acts as humanity, rather than just for it. And you are… very human.'

I look at the Sister blankly, head swimming once again with the effort of trying to fathom her point. But soon enough, she remembers that I am a simple man, and jumps directly to the thing I need to understand.

'Jethras, you will be given a holy weapon, and you will stand beside Captain Profugus of the Angels Encarmine, as the gate is breached. You will advance together, and since almost all enemy fire will be concentrated on the Space Marines, there's at least a chance you will survive the breach and the following battle unharmed.'

'And if I do?'

'Then you will get as close as you can to the necron king, and then - if Profugus deems it tactically sound to allow you an opening - you will strike the blow that kills it. Die in the attempt, as is likely, and you still will have died with honour. Die after doing so, however, and you'll be forever remembered as Jethras the Implacable, the Martyr of the Saint Damiane Crusade.'

Despite my bleeding brain, the weird medicine burning through my veins, the moans of the dying, and the impossible prospect ahead of me, my face breaks out in a grin that feels like it'll split my whole head in two. 'Cos although it's the last of 'em, this is the happiest day of my whole life.

XIV

Dying's not so bad, when it comes to it. Takes longer than I thought, though. I thought I'd already gone once, as everything fell to darkness for a time. But now I seem to be back, at least for a moment or two.

There's men shouting everywhere, and rubber screeching, as vehicles skid to a halt on the alien stones and throw their tailgates down to load men aboard. The Space Marines - and I thank the Emperor once more, that I got to witness His sons before the end - have already gone. It's like everyone's in a hurry to get out of the city, now that it's fallen, and it seems odd to me. But I know it must be part of the Master of Mankind's great plan, so I let it all wash over me, and wait for the end. It's the most perfect rest I've ever felt, despite the pain seeping back into my bones. 'Cos for all my bodily wounds, there's no troubles left in my soul, and so there ain't nothing to hold me back from the golden light, when it comes.

'Cos I did all that was required of me.

That's what the Space Marine said, at the end of it. Not Captain Profugus, as he'd fallen by then, but his second, whose name I'll never know. He stood over me like a tower of red iron, with his helm off so I could see his face, and he looked me right in the eye. And then he nodded at me. It was only an inch-deep dip of that massive, scarred head, but it was an inch that held ten thousand miles of honour.

It's hard to know quite how I did it, since when the gate fell they gave me another medicine that made me fight like an engine, and it made my thoughts melt away and flow into my blood. But I remember the moment itself, clear as if it were etched in plex-glass before me now. Profugus took a terrible strike from the xenos king - some unholy black blade that made his armour fizz where it hit, and knocked him to the ground. But before the fight went out of him, he looked right at me, and commanded me with the last ghost of his breath.

And I struck. The xenos king had stalked right past me to get at Profugus, and it was wounded badly on one side - sparking and leaking some dreadful green gas from a gash across its ribs. I was near dead already then, in truth. But with what I had left, I rose up and drove that great, heavy sword the Sister gave me right into the monster's wound. The flame that came out around it near enough burned my arm to char, and I fell back. But the blade stayed in, crackling with golden light, till at last all the green fire had gone out of the xenos, and it keeled over empty, like a heap of scrap. I'd done all that was required of me.

The vehicles' engine-growls are fainter now. And what fighting's still going on sounds quieter too, and further away. Or it might be just 'cos I'm dying. I see something gold streak out across the sky right overhead, and I wonder if it might be my soul, headed to the Throne ahead of my body. If so, it's strange that it's being chased by our fighter craft, but there must be a good reason. The calm black comes down again.

The dark lifts just once more, and this time I can't hear anything, nor move. But the Emperor's granted me a last bit of sight, so I can see Him come for me at long last. 'Cos there, greater and more beautiful than I ever could've imagined, is the Throne itself. It's just pushing down through the bruise of the clouds above, too big to be real, but there's no doubting it's there. I never thought it'd be shaped like a great arch of metal, blazing with green fury in pits like the exhausts of engines, but I ain't troubled.

I seek not understanding, where awe will suffice.

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

The Twice-dead King: Ruin Limited Edition

I first met a necron in 1998, on the bus to school.

I was fourteen, and as London shivered its way through a January dawn outside the window, I retrieved my copy of White Dwarf from my soggy backpack, and prepared to leave the sodium-lit drizzle behind for the comparatively cheery world of the 41st millennium.

NECRONS! promised the cover, beside a blister pack containing some sort of robot murder skeleton. A TERRIFYING NEW RACE FOR WH40K. The skeleton seemed pretty cool, I suppose. But if I'm honest, I was more interested in what the orks were up to - so I slid the miniature into the damp, scratchy polyester of my blazer pocket, and forgot about it.

If you had leaned over the bus seat then, and told me that in twenty-two years' time, I'd be writing the foreword to a weirdly emotional, two-part novel about necrons... I probably would have given you a weird look and moved seats, for a start. But I wouldn't have believed you, either.

I mean, I definitely had plans on the novel front. I was already writing one, in fact, on exercise books nicked from the school stockroom. But it was a story about big, strong Space Marines and cigar-chewing Guardsmen, having loads of fights against hilariously stupid orks, and winning gloriously. Why would I want to write anything else?

But as the years went by, it became apparent there was a lot more to Warhammer 40,000 than that. In the grim darkness of the far future, it turned out, there wasn't just war. There was nuance. And that's the thing: underneath all the ultra-cool death machines and larger-than-life character designs, 40K is a sprawling, operatic tragedy. It's a universe where absolutely everyone is suffering.¹ Each faction has managed to paint itself into a corner with two thin coats of hubris, until every possible action they can take will only worsen their situation further.

This is most obvious in the case of the Imperium, as it's relatively easy for us to put ourselves in the cheap, produced-by-the-trillion shoes of its citizens. But what about the aliens they are urged so fanatically to abhor?

The necrons, in particular, are fascinating. Admittedly, until I wrote Severed in 2019, I'd not really thought much about them. I had known their lore had been developed over the years, but in my mind, they were still tethered to that robot murder skeleton, which had been entombed among the biscuit crumbs and loose change of a schoolboy's pocket two decades prior. They had always seemed, if I'm honest, like fairly generic baddies for the real 'heroes' of 40K to fight back against waves of.

But when I sat down to write Severed, I did what you should always do when writing from any point of view other than your own, and asked myself: How would it feel? And as the reality of just how dreadful it would feel to be a necron dawned on me, my face fell like that of a hungover man, remembering a series of increasingly poor decisions made the previous night.

Here you have a civilisation that climbed from a pitilessly harsh prehistory to a position of unimaginable strength, before sacrificing what slim vestige of joy they ever possessed in order to attain yet more power. The result? The galaxy at their command, but no way to feel any satisfaction from their triumph, and only decline to look forward to. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

It gets worse.

The necrons, for all their pride and their monuments, are not who they think they are. They're constructs, with access to the memories of once-living beings. Sometimes their personalities, too. But they aren't them. The people they remember being - the necrontyr - walked voluntarily into their own extinction sixty million years ago. They're nothing but ash on the wind now, and the necrons who carried on in their place have no choice but to spend the aeons standing guard over their territories and monuments, until time finally wears them away. For all their power, they're little more than self-aware gravestones.

Or are they? In Severed, I looked at the ways in which Zahndrekh and Obyron coped with the hand they had been dealt. It was a story about two people, really. But now, in The Twice-Dead King, I want to tell the story of a kingdom.

It starts on the other side of the galaxy from where Zahndrekh's adventures took place, and with a necron lord called Oltyx. He's lucky, as necrons go, granted all the astonishing powers of mind and body afforded to the upper echelons of royalty. But Oltyx doesn't think of things that way.

Having been a prince of sorts when biotransference came, Oltyx ended his life on the very cusp of adulthood, and was doomed as a necron to wait perpetually for a throne that he could never inherit. Watching his would-be kingdom slowly crumble around him drove him deep into bitter obsession, anger, and eventual disgrace.

He is an exile now, stuck on the very fringes of his dynasty's power, and consumed with resentment. But Oltyx's situation is about to get a lot more complicated, and he's going to learn some brutal truths about being careful what you wish for...

This is, hopefully, a Warhammer 40,000 story from a perspective you've never experienced before. I've got deeply into the (literal) nuts and bolts of necron culture, in order to present something fundamentally alien and hostile as familiar. And without giving too much away, I've also taken the opportunity to present the aspects of that universe we're most familiar with, as something fundamentally alien and hostile.

And of course, with this being Warhammer 40,000, it's all leading up to a massive fight. The Twice-Dead King is an adventure story through and through, with high-octane duels, teeming sieges, and battles on the outrageous scale permitted so perfectly by this setting. And it's a tragedy, yes - but it's a tragedy where many, many things explode. Teenaged Nate, with his exercise books full of endless fight scenes, would have loved it.

I certainly hope you have as much fun reading The Twice-Dead King as I had in writing it. And if, at some point along the way, you consider these strange, sad, robot murder skeletons we call necrons, and think: Oof. I know how that feels, then I will have done the job I set out to do. Who knows, it may even make you feel lucky to be human.

Enjoy - and look out for the Flayed Ones. They can get under your skin.

Nate Crowley

Walsall

October 2020

NOTES

– Well, apart from the orks. Hence my last book for Black Library.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Crowley is an SFF author and games journalist who lives in Walsall with his wife, daughter, and a cat he insists on calling Turkey Boy. He loves going to the zoo, playing needlessly complicated strategy games, and cooking incredible stews. His work for Black Library includes the novel Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, the novella Severed and the short stories ‘Empra’ and ‘The Enemy of My Enemy’.

An extract from The Twice-dead King: Ruin.

‘How has it come to this?’ growled Oltyx to himself, his voice low as the frozen wind, as he noticed the creature bleeding out on the flagstones. Once, Oltyx had been the brightest scion of an empire that had ruled a thousand stars. The kynazh, no less: third foremost of the great House of Ithakas, and destined one day for the dynastic throne. But things had not worked out that way, and he had ended up here.

Sedh: a ball of toxic sleet so enfeebled it no longer spun, but wallowed in place, with one hemisphere forever turned towards its dying sun. A desolate fringeworld, home only to outcasts and lunatics, on the very edge of Ithakan space. When Dynast Unnas had robbed Oltyx of his birthright and cast him from the royal house, he had appointed him as Sedh’s nomarch. Exiled him, in other words, to an endless twilight spent fending off incursions of vermin from beyond the border. And now, going by the shivering green lump beginning to stain the snow in the corner of his vision, it seemed the resources required to do that properly were slipping beyond his reach.

Even a lowly nomarch was above the vile work of clearing up organic waste. But Oltyx could already feel his doctrinal partition, where the first of his subminds sat, growing noisy with outrage over the intrusion, and he knew from bitter experience that it would not cease its hectoring until he dealt with the wounded thing himself.

Weary is the head that wears a crown, he thought blackly, and began descending the broad steps from the tomb’s entryway, down to where the intruder lay.

The Ossuary’s gates were fronted by an austere portico, shaped from a ledge jutting out from the cliff into which the complex was built. Oltyx had been standing in its shadows for the last twelve hours, staring gloomily out over the infantry picket. The intruder, no doubt, had thought him to be just more architecture: a weather-beaten statue of a skeletal giant, as still and lifeless as the columns beside it. But if it had looked closer through the gathering snow, it would have seen the faintest smouldering of emerald fire, like dying coals in the hollows between his iron ribs. Now, as his anger welled up from his deep core-flux, those coals caught flame, spreading their fury to the discharge nodes arrayed across his frame, until they glowed bright enough to cast a green halo on the snow where he passed.

Oltyx’s anger never truly receded. It was always there, waiting for a reason to rise. And now, it had several. He was angry at the legions, who were meant to be an extension of his own hand, for their failure in holding the line. He was angry at those who had cast him out and reduced him to this. But most of all, he was angry at the creature.

Sedh might have been an inconsequential holding, and his posting there a calculated insult from Unnas. But frigid, poison-throttled backwater though it was, it was still a world of Ithakas, and of the necrontyr. Their claim, staked an eternity ago, could never be conceded. Every inch of land within those ancient bounds, even a rock so meagre as Sedh, was kemmeht: ground fit only for gods and their servants, sacred beyond the comprehension of flesh. No place for the living.

This tomb was a place more sacred than most. The Grand Ossuary, while nothing compared with the tombs of the crownworld Antikef, was the greatest of Sedh’s sepulchral complexes. It was the bastion and resting place of this outpost’s lords, and those who had risen maintained their quarters here still, while its galleries were home to those still trapped in the long sleep. And in its deepest catacombs, of course, lurked the grim, ever-swelling crowd of those who had woken, only to slip into the second death of the curse.

Ithakas had woken far earlier than its neighbouring dynasties, and the Ossuary had stood as a frontier bastion during those fierce, proud years of reclamation. It had remained unbreached through the long centuries that followed, despite endless incursions from the land-hungry upstart species of the Unclean. Even as the dynasty had begun to slip into decline, its sanctity had been preserved, thanks to the tireless vigil of Sedh’s dwindling garrison. But now, on Oltyx’s watch, its stones had been befouled.

The interloper had only made it as far as the Temenos, the sacred precinct bordering the tomb’s entrance. But as the pious whisper from his doctrinal partition was already reminding him, that was a severe enough transgression.

The scar conferred on my master’s honour, it sneered, dripping with patrician disdain, will be indelible.

Oltyx examined the intruder, and agreed. The defilement had been achieved at the hand of perhaps the most pathetic of all the Unclean creatures encountered by Oltyx in his long existence. Glowering at the thing, he cued his xenology partition for a designation.

Grohtt, his fifth submind told him after a moment, is this thing’s name in the tongue of the orks.

‘Grohtt,’ murmured Oltyx out loud, after turning the word over in his vocal buffer like a wad of something foul. If nothing else, the enemy had a talent for onomatopoeia. The beast looked exactly as revolting as its name sounded. Snivelling, and wheezing through a punctured chest, the runtish green thing was the embodiment of furtive, animal cowardice. It was durable, though. The slave-beast had hauled itself two khet from where it had fallen at the infantry line, and had leaked a long smudge in the ash-grey snow, which repulsed Oltyx most of all.

‘Why can it not just die,’ he wondered aloud, to nobody but himself, ‘without wiping itself everywhere?’

Now, to his acute disgust, it had hooked a single, filthy talon over the bottom stair, and had begun pulling itself up. Oltyx swept down the last few steps to intercept it, swift and silent as a swooping raptor. He was, by now, extremely annoyed.

There had been eight waves of the grohtts so far, driven from the ork line to rush across the snow-sludge plain at the Ossuary. Whether the orks were fool enough to hope to exhaust the defenders’ ammunition, or just found it entertaining to send their thralls to their deaths, Oltyx had no idea. They were as stupid as they were cruel, after all. Either way, wave after wave had been cut down like reeds at the necron line, extinguished with archaic efficacy, despite the garrison’s woeful state of disrepair. Or at least, Oltyx had thought that had been the case. This survivor, apparently, had found the limit of his garrison’s capabilities. It probably thought it was lucky. But Oltyx would show it the opposite was true.

He towered over it, motionless as the gateway columns once more, as he waited for it to look up. When his title had been taken from him, he had undergone a rite of excoriation, which had burned the shining silver finish of Ithakas from his carapace. Left behind was the raw sublayer of his necrodermis, rough as lava rock and dark as night, with the pinpricks of his discharge nodes spread across it like constellations of green embers. They would be invisible to the grohtt’s vantage, however, drowned out by the blazing of the glyphic cartouche on his thorax – the dynastic sigil, lit directly by his core-fire. And above that, the baleful glow of his oculars, as he stared down at the alien in contempt.

Oltyx coaxed the tame, compact star of his core into a higher burn-plateau, radiating even more energy through his flux, so his lights would begin to edge from green into searing white. As the reactor rumbled, the dirty snow began to hiss into steam where its flurries brushed his carapace, making his ire into something tangible. Though it was scant remedy for the defilement, he could at least ensure the wretch spent its last moments overcome with awe and dread.

The grohtt peered up at him, red eyes squinting down the length of its hideous proboscis, and bared the jagged yellow nubs of its teeth. It regarded him for a long time, quaking with cold as it died, but it didn’t look particularly awed. If anything, it looked confused. Eventually, with a cackle that became a wet, wracking cough, it spat a great glob of black mucus onto his footplate.

That was enough, at last, to transmute his anger into fury. It began as something cognitive – a matter of rapid-collapse logic states, refrenations and cascading induction failures. But his mind and body were no longer truly separate, and soon the discord surged through him with the roiling currents of his core-flux. Along with it rode the phantom sensation of having once had blood, and the unexpected revulsion tore away the last of Oltyx’s self-control. His heel flattened the creature’s skull, the grohtt sullying him further with a spray of cranial fluid, and fury-patterns wracked his discharge nodes through the steam that wreathed them.

When it became aware of the gore-clots fanned across his leg plating, his doctrinal submind was scandalised.

Fl*sh! it wailed, before falling into a horrified susurration of Taboo, Taboo, Taboo, as it queued a needless quantity of cleaner scarab summons to his interstitial node. But Oltyx swiped the whole stack away. After the submind had spent so long needling him over lost honour, he would gladly endure the mess, if only to make the pompous little ghost suffer. However, there were other consequences due, and so he muted its shrieks.

‘Praetor Neth!’ he boomed over the howling wind, the rough iron of his voice echoing down the snow-crusted friezes of the Ossuary wall. ‘Come, warden, and account for yourself.’

To a mortal, the praetor would have been a sight to inspire terror. Almost as tall as Oltyx himself, and broader across his armoured shoulders, Neth had been a commoner in life, but had served faithfully and arduously enough to earn an eternity of conscious service as the warden of Sedh’s garrison. He suspected the praetor thought of himself as a vargard of sorts to the nomarchial throne – but if so, he was mistaken. Oltyx’s rank might have been lowered to this posting, but his standards remained those of a kynazh; the likes of Neth would only ever be fit to direct the mindless ranks of the peasantry on his behalf. And here, the orders provided could not have been more simple: Neth had been given fifteen of the garrison’s most intact legions of warriors, and told to hold the line at the Temenos’ edge.

But Neth was a fool, with a mind full of holes. Degraded by the pattern ataxia that beset so many, he had been in a poor state even back when Oltyx had inherited him with the garrison, and he had only grown worse with time. All too often now, he could barely hold a sentence together, let alone a line of battle. And like the countless others in his condition or worse, he could never be repaired.

Neth knew it, too. Oltyx could see his shame in the way his head hung as he walked through the falling snow. The praetor was… cringing, his discharge nodes rippling with shame-patterns that only served to stoke the violence thrumming in Oltyx’s core. Even the grohtt had faced him with more courage, thought the nomarch, as Neth knelt before him with a grinding of time-worn joints.

‘A th-thousand apologies, my lord,’ croaked the praetor, actuators stuttering and distorting around the words. ‘Th… they… are many, however, and the ph-phalanxes are spread too th… thin along the line. We–’

‘You were required to make do with what was provided you, praetor,’ said Oltyx in a stentorian rumble, underscored by the sizzle of snowflakes on his glaive, as an exhumation protocol brought it to hand from the dimensional appendix that served as its sheath. ‘My word was clear – nothing was to pass the line. Repeat the rest of my command, praetor.’

‘My nomarch, I… beg you…’

‘Repeat my command!’ spat Oltyx, vocal actuators fuzzing from the force of his anger, as he sent Neth sprawling with a blow from the glaive’s butt. The praetor did not say a word as he clattered down three more steps, just rose stiffly into a kneeling position once more. His slowness was agonising to watch, but this was no time to let pity take root.

‘These s-s-sacred stones are not to be defiled,’ recited the praetor hopelessly, ‘until you, yourself, ha-v-v-v-ve fallen in their defence.’

‘And yet, the stones are defiled,’ reasoned Oltyx, with a gesture at the carcass. ‘Insufficient.’ He let the silence stretch, and when he spoke again, he let the vibration of his actuators take on the softness of deep foreboding. ‘All is not lost, however. It would seem there is a contingency yet open to you, praetor, allowing you to honour the spirit of my command. In retrospect, at least.’

It took Neth a moment to follow his lord’s meaning, but he got there.

‘So be it,’ said the praetor, voice like a whisper of tomb dust as he bowed his weathered faceplate in supplication. ‘I will g-gladly-y pay that price, for honour.’

Slowly, grimly, and watched by nobody, since the empty-minded ranks of the warriors only stared off into the clouds on the horizon, Oltyx raised his weapon. Satisfied at last, at least in comparison with its usual state, Doctrinal stacked commendation-glyphs in the corner of his vision.

My master acts in the manner of a true ruler, the submind told him. It was patronising and stuffy in its delivery. But it was correct. There was a reason it was ranked first among his partitioned selves, after all. These terrible moments of hardness, where propriety overcame all sentiment, were the moments where he knew he was still a leader: that he could still be great, despite the shame inflicted on him by Unnas.

Neth’s oculars flickered for a moment, and a faint shiver across Oltyx’s interstitial node told him the praetor had shut down his recall protocol. When he was cut down, his patterns would not be translated back to the Ossuary’s heart for reconstruction. The immortal warrior was readying himself for death. To his horror, Oltyx found his anger stalling in the face of the praetor’s humility. Neth had done his best. With the warriors of the garrison growing dimmer and slower with every year that passed, was it any wonder his troops had not achieved perfection? And yet here he was anyway, willing to die as penance for falling short.

Oltyx arrested the thoughts before they could grow into compassion. Compassion, he knew, was weakness speaking. He could not make excuses on behalf of his lessers. Though he might no longer be kynazh, he was still royal. His orders were not requests, but statements of fact. If the universe did not conform to their truth, it was his subjects’ duty to remake it until it did. To fail in that service was to call him a liar – or worse, to deny his heka; the presidence of his will over reality. Neither could be permitted.

Oltyx swung the glaive.

But before the blade could connect, a light seared through his optic buffer, accompanied by the sensation that his limbs were being torn from his control. His arms spasmed, and the strike went wide of the praetor’s neck.

No. The voice came from his strategic partition, and it was almost indistinguishable from the voice of his own thoughts – after all, that was very nearly what it was. The strategic submind was the second of his set of five, and just like the first in the doctrinal partition and the fifth in xenology, it was a shackled, partial duplicate of his own consciousness.

We must not, it stated.

That was unusual, thought Oltyx, too shocked to be affronted as he connected the facts. Had Strategic just caused that spasm? It was impossible, by design, for his subservient mirror-selves to intercede in his actuator functions – or for that matter any of the vital systems reserved for his access alone.

At least, it should have been impossible. He would have to speak to Mentep, the engrammancer who had forged the subminds in the first place, about that. When he returned, that was. True to the nature of his caste, Sedh’s resident cryptek moved around local space like a piece on a board that only he could understand, and had vanished some days ago, on unspecified business. For the time being, Oltyx supposed he should let Strategic explain itself before he did anything drastic to it – it was possibly the copy of himself he despised least, after all.

Please do explain, Oltyx thought acidly to the second submind, as he quietly queued encryption-rewrites for every kinetic actuator in his body.

You asked yourself, master, why the orks sent their slaves to die on our line, reported Strategic, in its usual clipped tones. Now you know. They hoped to sow disorder. The orks are cruel, but not stupid. They know our pride – what division it might cause if something so lowly as a…

Grohtt, sneered the xenology submind, unable to resist flashing a disgust-glyph, for its fascination for the Unclean was matched only by its hatred of them.

…was to breach our line. Now this has happened. For the price of a slave, they will have killed a general.

Neth is no longer fit for duty, submind. You know this.

Perhaps – but who better will replace him?

Grim realisation settled over Oltyx then, like the poison snow on his rapidly cooling carapace, as he realised the strategic mind was right. He was so used to despising Neth, he tended to forget the praetor was still the most capable asset in his direct command. Certainly, Oltyx had access to a whole community of exiles, deviants and vagabonds on this sorry frontier fringeworld, and many of those lords had thousands of troops at their command. But they were not his. Since his royalty had been cut away with his silver, and he held only the post of nomarch, Sedh’s nobles were allies to be reasoned with, rather than subjects to be ordered.

Under the rigid hierarchy of the dynasty, then, his only assets were the three tessarions of the garrison, comprising thirty-five decurions spread between them. Fifty thousand soldiers, in theory, along with supporting detachments of canoptek constructs and war engines. In practice, though, nearly a quarter of the garrison had been lost to the curse, and barely a third of the remainder – perhaps fifteen thousand warriors – still functioned with any real efficiency. The garrison’s command network was in a sorrier state still, and the various subsidiary commanders were so degraded they made Neth seem as cunning as Orikan himself by comparison: almost all had either slipped downwards into the bafflement of engrammatic degeneration, or sideways into the madness of the curse.

A failure though he was, therefore, Neth was still too precious to waste – even if protocol demanded his deletion. Oltyx had known this on a rational level, but he had not seen the truth through his anger, which looked exactly like righteousness when it grew dense enough. This was why he had commissioned Mentep to augment his mind, he supposed. Even if he had preferred it when his subminds had not taken such a… direct involvement in his decision-making, they saw truths sometimes, which he could not. While leadership meant putting propriety over sentiment, in Oltyx’s opinion at least, genius lay in knowing when to put reason over propriety.

Djoseras, the elder kynazh of his house – and so heir to Dynast Unnas – would have been appalled. But Djoseras had always been appalled when it came to Oltyx. While the younger of the pair believed in pragmatism, the elder believed in propriety over everything. It was the reason they had fallen into the feud that had eventually led to Oltyx’s exile by Unnas, and the reason Djoseras had stood by and let him be banished, despite the injustice of the sentence. Oltyx reminded himself that he owed the fastidious prig nothing, least of all his consideration. Exile had, at least, put his decisions back into his own hands, away from the elder scion’s constant criticism.

He would spare Neth. But he stayed silent and mind-blank as he lowered his glaive, unwilling to let Strategic have the satisfaction of knowing it had been right.

I am glad you listened to my suggestion, master, said the submind anyway, appending a glyph of faint amusement to the statement, as it had seen right through him. Now look to the horizon – see why I offered it. After that it withdrew to its partition and Oltyx, fuming with its insubordination, locked the metaphorical door behind it, putting it under a seal of silence until he felt otherwise. The damned thing would have to ask permission before it spoke to him again.

Neth, meanwhile, was still waiting patiently for death. And if the warden was confused by Oltyx’s apparent mercy, he wasn’t daring to show it. No matter; the fool could keep waiting. Whatever the feelings of his strategic partition, there was no way Oltyx was letting the praetor escape all consequences. Bristling with fresh irritation, he tasked his third submind – Combat, which paced its partition like a beast, snarling rather than speaking – with working out how grievously he could batter Neth and still leave him repairable. Combat set about the task with relish.

Then he sent for the cleaning scarabs at last, as the grohtt’s phlegmy neural tissue was beginning to freeze onto his leg, and it repulsed him to his core. Finally, and with petty satisfaction at leaving it until last, he followed Strategic’s suggestion and looked to the horizon.

Ah, thought Oltyx then, as he quietly rescinded the order he had given to the combat partition. Apparently, he would need Neth fit to fight somewhat sooner than expected. The orks, at last, were on the move.

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First published in The Twice-dead King: Ruin in Great Britain in 2021.
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