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Allegiance - Chris Wraight

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Allegiance

Chris Wraight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the real world, though, he had escaped.

‘Did you know Ahriman?’ asked Yesugei.

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

‘He was respected? I assume so.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘So I hear.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Will come back.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Then what?’

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

Release them. The phrase was unusually euphemistic.

‘Seems a waste,’ said Arvida.

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

He looked back up at Arvida.

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

There it was again. The Stormseer was certainly insistent.

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

In his dreams, he went back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ready?’ asked Yesugei over the comm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Good.’

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

‘I know.’

‘Then why I choose to best you myself?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that was not what Yesugei was testing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They both froze. The point of Arvida’s sword rested under Yesugei’s chin, angled upward.

Yesugei started to chuckle. He let his own weapon fall.

‘You saw!’ he said, delighted. ‘I feel you do it.’

Arvida broke away. Despite himself, he could not pretend that he wasn’t pleased. The sight – the Corvidae-sight – had returned.

‘It was just a flicker.’

Yesugei clapped him on the shoulder. ‘But will return. You know it.’

‘Perhaps. You fight well, for an old shaman.’

Yesugei laughed, and pulled back, raising his blade again and falling into a combat stance.

‘Then we do it again,’ he said.

The duels lasted for six more hours before Yesugei let him rest. By that time, Arvida’s body was drained and his mind numb. He limped from the sparring chamber, feeling the old wounds flaring and old exhaustions returning.

Yesugei came with him. Arvida was glad to observe that the Stormseer was at least breathing heavily – the pain-giving had not been entirely one-way.

‘How many times?’ asked Yesugei, following Arvida out into a wide corridor.

Arvida shrugged, still walking. ‘Maybe three times. They were just fragments.’

‘But that is start.’

They walked down a long corridor. Serf menials in white tunics shuffled past, hurrying from one task to another. They all saluted – at Yesugei with joy, at Arvida with a wary curiosity. As ever, the Swordstorm was bustling with movement and energy, like a great beast coiled for the pounce.

‘You still have not told me where the fleet is heading,’ Arvida remarked.

‘Yet to be decided,’ said Yesugei. ‘Legion is not yet ready, so we remain hidden. Will not be long now. The Khan will extend his fingers, seeking out enemy, and then the ordu will be summoned.’

‘The enemy will find you, if you don’t move soon.’

‘He knows,’ said Yesugei.

The spaces around them began to open up. They were heading towards the more populated zones of the flagship, and great lumen-chandeliers hung overhead, making the gilt and marble of the corridor walls shimmer. They entered a long hallway lined with mirrors, over which ten metre-tall calligraphic scrolls hung. Arvida had begun to recognise what some of the texts indicated, even if he couldn’t translate them. Some were records of battles fought and won, others were lists of Legion personnel, perhaps lost during the Great Crusade. Some of the largest and most prestigious scrolls seemed to contain – Arvida guessed by the layout and the decorative borders – poetry.

Ahead, at the far end of the hall, a squad of White Scars came marching towards them. Unusually, they were wearing their helms and carried blade weapons unsheathed in armoured hands.

Yesugei saw them and a flicker of unease passed across his scarred features. A second later, Arvida saw why.

In the centre of the squad, walking along with them, was a lone legionary. Unlike the others he wore no armour, only a white shift. His hands were bound at the wrists in adamantium shackles and some kind of torc had been placed around his neck. His tunic bore a single rune daubed in red on the linen.

Yesugei stood aside to allow the squad to pass; Arvida did also. The escorted warrior did not make eye contact with anyone. He stared straight ahead as he was marched along, saying nothing, his shoulders proudly pushed back.

Arvida couldn’t take his eyes off the legionary’s face. The warrior wore a curious expression – dejected, beaten, yet resolutely defiant. There was no self-pity in that face, nor was there any fear, just a bleak kind of certainty, as though his body were no longer truly his own and he was now being dragged along by the currents of fate.

No son of Prospero would ever have looked that way. Magnus’s sons had a different temper, a belief that all situations could be overcome with the application of wisdom, and that the laws of men were subordinate, should conflict arise, to the law of reason.

We were a reasonable people, Arvida thought. We were never zealots. And yet for this, the fury of the universe was unleashed upon us.

‘The tribunals?’ Arvida asked, once the squad had moved out of sight.

Yesugei nodded. ‘I knew him.’

‘What will happen?’

Yesugei did not answer but started to walk again. They went on in silence until they reached the Stormseer’s private chambers.

Once inside, Yesugei went over to an iron-bound chest and withdrew a package wrapped in cloth. It was large, heavy, and he held it in both hands.

‘This was first day,’ he said, handing it to Arvida. ‘First day remembering your sight. From here, you will be restored.’

Arvida took the package, and pulled back the cloth. Underneath was a pauldron, newly forged and painted in dazzling white. The armoured rim was crimson and the device on the face was something he had never seen before: the serpentine star of Prospero set atop the lightning-strike of the Khans.

‘I had it made,’ said Yesugei. ‘Your shoulder guard is your weakness.’

Arvida held the new pauldron up, rotating it in the light. It was well-crafted, just as all Legion wargear was well-crafted. The sigils were subtle and drawn in the free-form Chogorian style, ringed by immaculate Khorchin lettering.

It was a beautiful thing. Arvida already knew that it would fit perfectly with his own battleplate, completing his protective shell and making him whole again. There could be no complaint with its substance.

‘What you think?’ asked Yesugei.

Arvida studied it carefully. It was a fine gesture from one Legion to another. He did not need to ask how much care had gone into its creation, for the quality was evident.

His eyes flicked up at Yesugei’s expectant face. The Stormseer was looking back at him eagerly, his thoughts unhidden.

A new Ahriman, Arvida mused. A new axis to replace the old.

He pulled the cloth back over the surface of the plate, obscuring the hybrid Legion symbol.

‘It will take some getting used to,’ he said, truthfully enough.

At first, all that he pulled from the rubble was worthless. A few scorched trinkets, their beauty melted. He doubted the Wolves had looted anything – the destruction they brought was too complete, and in any case they were not robbers, just murderers.

There was no sunrise and no sunset, just a blank screen of darkness broken only by the faint muttering of ghosts. As his body weakened, it became hard to know what was real and what was imagined. His future-sense atrophied and every exercise of cult powers brought pain.

He kept searching. The quest for a sliver of the past became the one fixed point for him and he pushed on, rooting through every library and archive until his eyes were red with fatigue and his fingers trembled.

He couldn’t get close to the heart of the old city. It was plagued by the revenants of psychneuein, swarms of them, and for every one he warded off with fire, another five homed in on him. They were protecting something, or perhaps just hovering around it. But whatever it was, Arvida no longer had the strength to penetrate their cordon to reach it.

He turned to the lesser spires. Most were husks, hollow like storm-blown trees, blown apart by incendiaries and then stripped bare by ravening infantry packs. One, though, set further out from the haunted Occullum Square, had survived partially intact.

Arvida climbed a long, winding spiral stair to reach the summit. He entered a circular chamber, open to the elements and with its ruined walls poking up like broken ribs. Lightning seemed drawn to it, and arced around the jagged crown in a lattice of silver.

He stalked through the remains – a splintered desk, scraps of flaking parchment, and cracked and headless statues. He kicked aside heaps of refuse, exposing an elaborately tiled floor. He saw sigils glimmer in the flashes of light. There were idealised serpents, and the ubiquitous eye of knowledge, and the symbols of the Enumerations, and esoteric images from a dozen worlds tracing a ceremonial line back to Terra.

He brushed aside the dust from a stone door lintel, revealing the raven’s head of his order engraved there. In an instant, he remembered the place as it had been, lit with candles and smelling of book-leather.

Ahriman’s library.

He had only visited it twice, and only once in the presence of its master. Ahzek Ahriman had been the head of his cult discipline but not his military commander, so their links were not close. Arvida remembered a smooth, pleasant face animated by intelligence and a ready, eager appetite for wonder.

Presumably Ahriman was dead, as were Amon and Hathor Maat and all the others. He had not seen their ghosts, though. Why was that?

Prospero’s crystal dust lay in clumps, just as it did everywhere. He pushed it aside, watching the black spores clot against his gauntlets. As he moved, his right shoulder guard clicked again – the armour-seal had broken and every movement levered the gap a little wider.

He hunted through the library’s remains diligently, but after an hour or so he began to lose hope. There were a few of the familiar bits and pieces, but nothing suitable. Beyond the skeletal chamber walls the wind picked up, hot and bitter.

He was about to turn back, when his trailing hand caught on something buried in the ash flakes. It felt oddly warm, as if powered by a heat source, but when he picked it up he realised that that was not possible.

It was a tin box, battered and scratched, and with the last remnants of a fabric binding clinging to the hinge-line. Sheltering it in his cupped palm, Arvida carefully prised it open. A faded figure stared back at him – a lady, dressed in robes and carrying a rod of queenly office, her face smudged.

Manipulating the contents was difficult in his gauntlets so Arvida moved over to the desktop and gently tipped them out on to a cleared area. It was a pack of card-wafers. Shielding them against the wind, he ran his eyes over the pictures on each card’s face. He did not understand most of them, but some were vaguely familiar. They were crude depictions, their colours bleached by time, but the poses and configurations were suggestive.

Why this? he found himself thinking. Of all the treasures, all the riches, why this?

It was one of Ahriman’s amusements, no doubt. A fortune-telling deck, tainted with a little warp-wisdom, or possibly just very old. He had seen similar things in his time, and had always found them unimpressive scrying aids. Far better to tap the Great Ocean directly, plugging into the heartblood of the empyrean.

‘That is not yours,’ came a voice from behind him.

Arvida whirled to face it, clamping his palm over the cards to prevent them from gusting away. He had already drawn his bolter with the other hand.

A Space Marine stood before him, his face exposed. He was a White Scars legionary, one of Jaghatai’s savage mystics. He wore the same strange, dejected expression that he had done on the Swordstorm.

It was then that Arvida realised he was dreaming again, and that even the solid things around him were memories, and the ghosts in the wind were memories of memories.

‘I am the last,’ Arvida replied, slinging his bolter and collecting the cards up again. ‘It is as much mine as anyone’s.’

‘This world is cursed,’ said the nameless White Scars legionary. ‘Leave it. No good can come of it.’

Arvida felt his damaged pauldron click as his arms moved. ‘Leave it? That is what you would recommend. You’re uncurious, the lot of you.’

‘Put it back.’

Arvida laughed at him, though it made his parched throat flare with pain. ‘What does it matter? I will die here. Permit me one last remnant to hold on to before the end.’

‘You will not die here.’

Arvida stopped in his tracks. Of course he wouldn’t. He’d always known that, even during the darkest moments. Why did he even say it?

He looked up at the legionary again, intending to ask why he was there and what he portended but, with a dreary predictability, there was now no sign of him. The bitter wind swirled around the remains of the library, whipping up the top layers of dust and driving them in eddying patterns.

Arvida took up the tin box, sealed it again and locked it securely at his belt.

‘One last remnant,’ he said to himself, making for the stairwell.

‘You should let me see it,’ Arvida had said.

‘You will not be admitted,’ Yesugei had replied.

‘Why not?’

‘For the Legion only.’

‘But I am of the Legion,’ Arvida had countered, pointedly turning his shoulder to reveal the hybrid pauldron that he now wore. ‘That is, if you still wish me to be.’

Yesugei had smiled, recognising the trap he had set for himself. He had left then and did not return for some time, no doubt making representations in the places where representations needed to be made.

Two days later, he came back. By then, Arvida’s sight was almost as acute as it had been before Prospero’s destruction and he sensed the Stormseer’s arrival at his chamber several minutes before he actually arrived.

‘It is time,’ Yesugei announced. He was wearing ceremonial robes of white linen, lined with close-written Khorchin picked out in gold. His shaven, amiable head gleamed under the light of the lumens, exposing every tattoo and scar.

Arvida was helm-less, though still in armour, fresh from a punishing practice bout with the cages’ automata. The star-and-lightning sigil was on his right shoulder guard; the new pauldron had already proved its worth and saved him from taking new wounds.

‘Then it is permitted?’ Arvida asked, reaching for a cloak to drape over his battleplate.

‘The Khan ruled,’ said Yesugei. ‘He remains grateful.’

Arvida followed Yesugei out of his chamber. ‘Do I need to prepare?’

‘Just observe, since you wish to see it. But are you wounded?’

Arvida turned slightly, hiding his neck where the rash had grown worse. It was no true wound, though it itched madly. His hands, too, fizzed hotly under the skin.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

They walked for a long time, passing through parts of the ship that Arvida had not been shown before. Gradually, the proportion of human serfs fell away, until they were surrounded only by fellow Space Marines. The White Scars were decked out in robes similar to Yesugei’s. Some wore armour under them but most did not.

They assembled in a steep auditorium set high up in the Swordstorm’s command nexus. A semicircle of seats rose from a marble stage marked with the symbol of the Legion. Battle standards hung down over the wall behind it, many scorched around the edges or punched through with charred bolter wounds. Arvida scanned the banners. His Khorchin was still elementary, but he knew enough of the characters to read the names of planets: Naamani, Wahd Jien, Magala, Eilixo, Ullanor, Chondax.

Several hundred warriors took their places. Arvida found a seat near the top rows, accompanied by Yesugei. Two stone lecterns faced one another on the marble floor, both empty, both draped in Legion colours. Once the audience had settled in position, the doors to the auditorium clanged shut. Artificial lights dimmed, replaced by bronze bowls with tongues of yellow flame.

Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of the coals. No warrior spoke. The atmosphere became tense.

After what seemed a very long time, double doors set into the rear wall unlocked and swung open. The same warrior that Arvida had seen earlier was escorted to one of the lecterns. He looked much as he had before, both in real life and in Arvida’s dreams.

He was no longer shackled, and his arms hung loosely by his sides. His shoulders were still set back, his expression still unyieldingly proud.

That has always been the weakness of our kind, thought Arvida. Magnus most of all, but none of us are free of it.

The condemned warrior stood at the lectern and his guards left him.

A few moments later the doors opened again and one of the eighteen most lethal individuals in the galaxy took his place at the other lectern.

The primarch was arrayed in what Arvida guessed was traditional dress from his home world – leather jerkin, fur-lined cloak, knee-length kaftan of spun gold, and metal-tipped riding boots. Illuminated screeds hung from his shoulders and a bejewelled and curved scabbard had been threaded through his wide, bronze-buckled belt.

His head was bare, save for a slender circlet of gold set about his forehead. His long hair had been gathered into a topknot, revealing a harsh, spare face of sun-hardened skin. He bore himself with the unconscious poise of a plains-warrior, though the cultivated dignity in his mien spoke of a more profound heritage.

The Khan. The Khagan. The Warhawk.

He seemed to occupy more space than he should, as if his soul pressed up against its physical boundaries too hard. Arvida had seen him fight on Prospero, taking on the Death Lord Mortarion, and it had been the most complete display of swordmastery that he had ever witnessed. Even out of his armour-clad finery and set in the mundane surroundings of a court of enquiry, the raw danger of his presence could not be extinguished.

There was nothing surplus about the Khan. He was as pure and elemental as a flame, a force of eternity set loose in a universe of petty souls.

He did not look up at his assembled warriors. His expression gave almost nothing away, save for a vague sense of distaste at what he was being forced to do.

‘So,’ he said, his great voice reverberating around the chamber like the soft, dour threat-growl of a tyger. ‘Let us begin.’

The tribunal was conducted in Khorchin. Arvida and Yesugei had both known this would be the case, and so they had made arrangements. As the participants spoke, Yesugei translated into Gothic and the words appeared in Arvida’s mind just as if the speakers had placed them there. The process was not entirely passive, though, as Arvida used his own future-sense to pick up nuance and inflection from the original utterances. The result was a kind of amalgamated thought-speech, almost indistinguishable from listening to the real thing.

Arvida found the exercise taxing, but it was preferable to having Yesugei whispering in his ear the whole time. He also suspected the Stormseer of using the thought-speech to test how quickly Arvida’s precognitive abilities were recovering.

‘State your name,’ said the Khan, though his lips formed different word-forms to Arvida’s eyes.

‘I am called Orzun, of the Brotherhood of the Hooked Blade.’

The condemned warrior looked directly at his primarch, neither cowering nor insolent. The disparity between them was evident, though the similarity was, too.

‘State your crime.’

‘I listened to the lies of the Warmaster’s servants and joined myself to those who planned to subvert the Legion. I was swayed by the words of Hasik Noyan-Khan. I killed brothers of the ordu on the attack frigate Ghamaliz when resistance was encountered and only ceased my insurrection when we were shown that the Noyan-Khan had been laid low and the Khagan had returned.’

The Khan’s gaze never wavered. It was steel-hard, as if by relaxing it a fraction he would allow the doubts back that had crippled the Legion’s resolve.

‘And what is your allegiance now?’

‘To the Khagan, to the ordu of Jaghatai and, through him, to the Imperium of Mankind. In my pride and folly, I erred.’

‘For what reason?’

‘I was told that the Emperor had forsaken the Great Crusade to commune with xenos. I believed the Warmaster’s grievance was just. I believed that you and he were brothers in arms and that our movement would ease the passage towards your alliance.’

‘You did not seek the gifts of the yaksha, nor those of the zadyin arga?’

Orzun shook his head vehemently. ‘I did not. I am a warrior, a bearer of the guan dao. I only wished to see the blades of the Khagan and the Warmaster wielded side by side.’

‘Others did what you have done. Where their faith was good, and where the blood-crime was not grave, they have been allowed to serve again. They have become the sagyar mazan, and have taken vengeance to the enemy. Should they live, they will return to the Legion, their crimes dissolved. I have studied your case, Orzun of the Brotherhood of the Hooked Blade. That path stands before you, should you wish to take it.’

‘With regret, Khagan, I cannot.’

The Khan’s face remained stony, as if inuring himself to impending grief. ‘Tell me the reason why.’

‘I swore the blood oath.’

A low murmur ran around the auditorium. So, Orzun was one of them.

‘You choose death, when life is offered,’ said the Khan.

‘I swore on the Path of Heaven, and called on the eternal void to take me and devour my soul if I reneged on my vow. I followed the rite of the tsusan garag and committed myself to the universe’s binding. The choice was wrong but the oath remains, as does the fate of the oathbreaker, just as it has been since we walked the endless grass.’

‘This war is different. Greater powers than you have already proved faithless.’

‘Then the void will damn them also.’

‘I can release you. I am the Khagan, the giver of the law. You do not need to do this.’

Orzun’s face, for the first time, flickered with uncertainty. He looked up at the warriors around him, then at the emblem of the Legion, then finally back at his primarch.

‘I have sworn it,’ he said. ‘It can never be taken back. Not even by you, lord.’

The Khan held his warrior’s gaze for a few moments more, scrutinising him for any chance of a recantation.

‘You were a fool, Orzun,’ he said. ‘Even if I had joined fates with my brother, I could never have tolerated this vow to persist. The blood oath is sacred, presided over by the zadyin arga and reserved for the settling of vendettas. You allowed them to trick you, to make it a sordid mockery. You have destroyed yourself, and at a time when I have need of warriors like never before.’

Orzun remained implacable as his master spoke. He knew it, just as every soul in the chamber knew it. That would not change his mind.

‘This is the final time of asking,’ said the Khan. ‘Will you renounce what you have sworn?’

Orzun’s reply was instant. ‘I would have fought with you until the gates of Terra, lord. I would have died there with a smile on my lips. But I will not become like those who ruined me. I will not speak falsely, not to any man, nor to the old gods, and I will not break an oath. I no longer deserve the life I was given.’

‘Then you know what must be done,’ said the Khan, drawing his sword.

He stepped down from his lectern and paced towards Orzun. The warrior stiffened, but did not move. The Khan stood over him, angling the point of his blade at Orzun’s unprotected chest.

‘Of all the treacheries my brother set in motion,’ he said, ‘this is the worst. He has corrupted that which was once whole and turned our sharpest blades against us. I wish you had not sworn, for you are worth a thousand of every traitor who broke his own vows. You could have fought with me at Terra. When I am there, your name will be engraved on my own armour, as will the names of all others who would not damn themselves by revoking the tsusan garag. I will use those names to bring malice to my sword-edge, and so even in this you will still serve.’

Orzun never looked away.

‘If I may ask, lord,’ he said, his voice still firm. ‘How many have renounced?’

The Khan shot him a wintry smile, as if the question itself were ridiculous.

‘None,’ he said, and pushed the blade through Orzun’s heart.

‘How many are there, like him?’ asked Arvida afterwards.

‘Not many,’ said Yesugei. ‘Even Hasik did not swear the blood oath, they tell me.’

‘Then the Khan has not wounded the Legion overmuch by ending them.’

‘Not the Legion,’ said Yesugei. ‘Himself, though, I think very much.’

Towards the end, the storms worsened. Arvida became aware of the great aetheric barrier smouldering above the clouds. It had ringed the planet, carried like the aftershock of a nuclear detonation and enclosing the world in a seething curtain of warp matter.

It would have been easy to lose hope, then. He could sense well enough that no ship could penetrate such an aegis and that his escape from Prospero was therefore impossible.

But certainty never left. He eked out his dwindling strength, hunting fruitlessly for food or water, warding off the attacks of the translucent psychneuein whenever they drew close. The rhythms of survival took over, punctuating his peripatetic existence.

He kept the cards safe. Every so often, when the lightning was vivid and he could see them more clearly, he took them out and shuffled the deck. No pattern emerged for him to interpret – he would see the number cards alternate with the pictures of kings and scholars and claw-footed devils. If it had once had the power of divination, that power had gone.

Or perhaps the cards still told true, and he could no longer see what he was being shown.

He couldn’t remember when he had last slept. He walked the ruins endlessly, occasionally talking to himself to remain sane. The only other sounds were the crack of thunder, the muffled crash of falling masonry and the half-heard susurration of the ghosts.

For some reason, he was drawn back towards the centre. Despite the danger, his meandering course took him ever closer to the origin. He saw the immense hump of the Pyramid of Photep and spent hours just watching it. The Occullum Square was close by, shimmering with the phantasmic dance of its strange guardians.

‘What are you waiting for?’ asked the White Scars legionary.

Arvida looked up at him. He knew his name now – Orzun. The warrior’s skin was bone-pale, and he had a fatal wound in his chest.

‘I don’t know,’ Arvida replied.

‘You took the cards.’

‘I did.’

‘Leave them.’

‘Why do you want me to leave them?’ Arvida smiled dryly, aware of the lunacy of talking to a shade. ‘Why do you want anything of me?’

‘All these things are sent as lessons,’ said Orzun. ‘Here is the pattern and we are the brush-strokes.’

Arvida ignored him. He wasn’t really there. Neither of them were.

‘What are you waiting for?’ asked Orzun again, repeating himself as if on a vid-loop.

‘I don’t know,’ Arvida replied, just as before.

Then, far away to the north, where the old Warhound corpse lay and where the armour of his fallen brothers was still scattered in the dust, Arvida felt a tremor. His head snapped up. He stood, peering out into the murk.

He saw nothing, not with his eyes, but he did feel the world’s warp-skin briefly pierced. Somewhere, out in the ruins, something had changed.

He started to move, already plotting a course towards the disturbance. He would have to go warily. Whatever had the power to break the aegis might well have the power to break him, too.

‘Just what do you expect of them, brother?’ called out Orzun, already fading into the gloom behind him. ‘Salvation?’

Arvida didn’t reply. He kept walking.

‘They might take you in,’ Orzun went on, ‘but then they will turn you. They have their own war now, and you are just a weapon in it. Why do you think they will be any different to the ones that came before?’

Orzun’s voice was becoming lost in the howl of the wind.

‘And what of the flesh-change, brother? When will you tell them of that?’

By then, though, Arvida wasn’t listening. He had no idea what had broken into his solitary world, but at least it was something. For the first time in a long while – and he had no means of knowing how long – he was not alone.

When Arvida woke, he knew what he had to do. He looked around his chamber on the Swordstorm for a final time then started to don his armour. As he did so, he saw the extent of the discolouration on his hands. It had spread during the night, welling up under the skin. He could sense the completeness of his psychic recovery, for Yesugei was a skilled tutor, but the Stormseer knew nothing of the XV Legion’s long-dormant curse. When he twisted his helm into position, the air-seal pressed painfully up against the swelling on his neck.

Just before leaving, Arvida opened a metal drawer under his bunk and retrieved the small box. Then he activated the door controls and slipped into the corridor outside.

The Swordstorm was in its nominal nocturnal period and the lumens were set low. Though thousands of the crew still worked, there were slightly fewer moving from deck to deck, which made his task easier.

Arvida went stealthily, treading in the manner he had learned when eluding the ghosts. As he crept along, he opened his mind out ahead of him, tracing future paths like branches of coral.

He saw others moving before they knew it themselves and used that knowledge to stay unseen. He would wait until the way ahead was clear and then hurry down it, already detecting the other souls who would be hard on his heels soon. He watched will-o’-the-wisp outlines of future-bodies moving in a mist of possibility and plotted his course to thread through them all.

Despite this skill, it was not possible to remain entirely undetected and so he was forced to disable some who came across him. He did not kill them – they were all mortals, and so were easy to render unconscious. The trail of bodies, though, limited his time to act. They would be discovered quickly, the alarm would be raised, and more formidable guards would be roused.

Arvida went up the decks, one by one, until he reached a pair of locked doors. He reached for the box, took it out and rested it against the join where the doors met the deck. Then he was off again, head low, picking up speed.

Down, this time – first via the lifter shafts and then using the manual stairways. His future-sight was not perfect. He ran across a group of four menials and nearly let one escape before he was able to immobilise them all.

He went more quickly after that, knowing the danger but unable to risk wasting any more time. He reached his destination, one of the dozens of void-hangar decks, and activated the security doors. The passcodes came to him easily as soon as he touched the keypads, the last thoughts of the previous operator swam into his mind.

He nearly made it out onto the deck without being seen, but the White Scars vigilance was not as casual as it had once been. With the airlock doors looming, alarms started to sound. He heard the thud of boots on the levels above and immediately sensed the numbers coming after him.

He pushed on through the airlock, sealing the doors behind him and depressurising the chamber. Air rushed past, drawn through grilled vents and diverted back into the rest of the ship. The sounds around him sucked away into a numb silence. Ahead of him lay an antechamber filled with racks of maintenance equipment and bulky fuel stations. Beyond the next doorway stood the void-deck, where his target rested.

Arvida hurried to the final rank of door controls, security-locked just like the others. He stumbled on the first attempt to enter the code, his thoughts distracted by the growing clamour in his mind. He sensed pursuers enter the corridors he had just run down, envisioned them discovering the bodies of the human serfs, and imagined them drawing their weapons.

He entered the code again, correctly this time, and the doors slid open. He locked the portal behind him, hoping his immediate hunters were from a different detail and that it would hold them up for at least a few seconds.

The system-runner Tajik stood on the wide deck before him, just as he had foreseen that it would. It was primed for launch, having docked only eight hours previously. Like all such vessels, it was kept in a state of constant readiness in a hangar open to the void. It was small, with a normal complement of only twenty, but it had the crucial feature he required – speed.

Just as he ran towards the ramp, he caught sight of a second set of blast-doors opening on the far right-hand side of the hangar. He swung around to see a lone White Scars legionary charging across the apron, his bolter already firing.

Arvida threw himself to the deck, sensing the bolt-rounds whistling across his back. He scrambled forward, gaining his feet again and bursting up to meet the warrior coming at him.

Arvida fired, hitting his enemy in the arm and sending his bolter tumbling from his grasp. Without missing a beat, the legionary switched to his tulwar blade, and brought it scything for Arvida’s torso. Arvida evaded the strike, but only barely, twisting awkwardly as the metal edge scraped across his armour.

At such range his own bolter was too clumsy, so he reached for his sword. The two of them traded blows in rapid succession, sending showers of armour-flakes bouncing around them on the iron deck.

Arvida sensed peripheral movement – another door had been opened – and felt the presence of at least a dozen souls milling behind the thick bulkheads.

There was no time. He increased the intensity of his swordplay, desperately seeking any way to disable the warrior before him. For a few moments, his opponent gave him nothing, and they remained locked in an evenly matched struggle.

Then, just as he had done with Yesugei, Arvida saw the path of the future unroll. The White Scar’s intentions revealed themselves in shimmer-outlines, betraying his movements and opening up his defence like a book.

Arvida reacted instantly, swiping his enemy’s blade from his hand. It hit the vacuum-silent deck five metres away and skittered harmlessly across the metal plates. Arvida’s next blow punched through the legionary’s armour, piercing his secondary heart and ending the contest. Polyps of blood spurted out, globulous in the vacuum.

It took two more strikes to stop the warrior from getting up and coming after him, by which time more hangar doors were opening. Weapons-fire lanced across the open space. Arvida saw projectile-paths searing ahead like tracer fire, and had to sprint hard to avoid being hit.

He made the Tajik’s assault ramp and clattered up inside. As soon as he reached the controls, he locked the ship’s hatches, powered up the drives, and keyed in the launch sequence. He could hear the zing and whine of more impacts on the pressurised ship’s hull, and detected heavy outer armour-plates descending beyond the hangar’s void-exit.

Soon they would have the Swordstorm’s shields up. Either that or the armoured screens would close, or his pursuers would disable the Tajik on the deck, or a kill-team would force their way in.

Arvida knew, though, that there would be time for none of those things. As he settled into the cockpit and clutched the control columns, he saw the void glinting back at him through the open exit.

He was out. He was free, evading them just as he had evaded every danger amidst the ruins of Tizca, and there was nothing they could do to catch him now.

Yesugei looked down at the battered tin box. He held it up to the light, running his eyes over the scratches and burn marks. The box itself was not old. Perhaps, in the past, its contents would have been housed in other more elaborate receptacles, like a saint’s bone in a reliquary.

He opened the box, spilling the cards onto the desk before him. One by one, he leafed through them. They were of Terran origin, he could tell, but beyond that he had little idea what their significance was. There were cards decorated with cups, swords, rods and coins. Some showed images of humans, others mythical beasts. As he cycled through them, he felt a faint heat from their surfaces – not physical heat, but the after-image of some psychic inferno.

That did not surprise him. Anything taken from Prospero would have had such a signature.

Yesugei studied the cards for a long time. He spread them out before him, rearranging them into whatever patterns felt appropriate, before pushing them back into a heap. Then he replaced them carefully in the box.

‘Why you do it?’ he asked.

Arvida, who sat opposite him across the desk, stared down at his own clasped hands. ‘I thought I could get out.’

‘The ship you took would not have cleared fleet. What were you thinking?’

‘There would have been a way.’

Yesugei shook his head, mystified. ‘But you change your mind. You never take off. Why?’

‘I was running. Orzun did not run.’

Yesugei’s brow creased in a frown, distorting the tattoos across his dark skin. ‘I do not understand.’

‘I am not Ahriman. You see that? I don’t have his power, and if I did then I would not use it in the same way. I am grateful – believe me, very grateful. But you’re trying to recreate something that no longer exists.’

Yesugei looked surprised. ‘I never–’

‘Yes, you did. I could feel it. You wanted to bind me to your Legion. In the end, you would have had me clad in white, with a curved sword and a skull-topped staff, and soon I would be speaking Khorchin just as you do.’ Arvida smiled dryly. ‘Just because my brothers brought ruin down on themselves does not mean I can forget them now.’

‘No Legion left on Prospero, Revuel. No cults now.’

‘Does it matter? Would it matter to you, if Chogoris had been burned and you were the last one left? I don’t think so.’

Yesugei tilted his head, acknowledging the point. ‘I was there, you know, when Magnus and the Khan and others make their pact. I thought it can come back, even if your primarch is gone. Perhaps not.’ He looked up, fixing Arvida with his golden eyes. ‘So you will go? You will leave us?’

Arvida nodded. ‘I have to. Just not yet, and not like that. It would have been… discourteous.’

‘See? You are already half White Scar.’

Arvida laughed. ‘Not really.’

‘Where you will go?’

‘I see portents, here and there. Beyond these moments, nothing.’

‘You are legionary,’ said Yesugei. ‘Not designed to fight alone.’

‘I was alone for a long time.’

‘Yes, and nearly killed you.’

‘I will know the moment when it comes. You, of all of us, should understand that.’

Yesugei picked up the box again and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘You left this for me.’

‘It was Ahriman’s. As far as I know, it’s the last thing of his intact in the galaxy. I thought you should have it.’

Yesugei toyed with it. ‘Do not know. It has strange shadow.’ Then he smiled, guiltily, as if chiding himself. ‘But it is fine gift. I will keep it. Who knows? Perhaps one day it will find way back to owner.’

‘Only if it can cross the veil. Ahriman is dead, just like the rest.’

‘We must assume so. But there are days when I cannot believe it.’ Yesugei stowed the box away. ‘I hope you can stop running, brother. What is left to run from? All is in the open.’

Arvida looked wary then, as if that were not entirely true.

‘No more running,’ was all he said.

The tribunals drew to their conclusion. Other defendants did not survive the judgement, either because they had committed crimes against the Legion’s codes of war, or because of the blood oath. The majority were inducted into the sagyar mazan, the bringers of vengeance, and were deployed in fast attack squadrons and given coordinates for immediate launch.

The rest of the fleet was instructed to form up for void-passage, and movement between vessels was curtailed. The time that Yesugei and Arvida had to spend in training ran out, and the Stormseer was increasingly called upon to perform other duties.

On the last day before the Swordstorm powered into the warp, Arvida made his way down the ship’s vast forge-levels. The level of industry there was intense, as the metal-beaters churned out weapons in a ceaseless stream. No one was under any illusion that they would not be needed.

He found the master of the forge, a hulking Terran named Sonogei. He withdrew the wrapped pauldron that he had carried down with him and pulled back the fabric covering it.

‘It is not one of ours,’ said Sonogei, staring at the crimson plate.

‘It is Fifteenth Legion,’ explained Arvida, showing him the raven’s head device set within the star. ‘The one I used to wear. Can it be mended?’

Sonogei took the pauldron and hefted it expertly, running his eyes down the lower-edge connectors. His servo-arms whirled, producing a scanning augur-needle, and a glowing green line slipped across the pitted surface.

‘It can,’ he said. ‘If you give me your connecting cannon assembly and breastplate, I can make it slot as smooth as oil. But you are the sorcerer? I have already made a shoulder guard for you. The zadyin arga ordered it.’

‘I still have it. It is a fine piece. But, forgive me – this armour kept me alive for a long time. I would wear it again, whole.’

Sonogei looked at him sceptically. Arvida stepped closer.

‘I would not ask if it were not important.’ He took the pauldron back, and held its insignia up to the light of the furnaces. ‘You see this? The emblem of my order. I took vows, when I joined, just as you did. I know you understand that. I’ve seen the proof of it.’ Arvida thought back to Orzun, and the final look of triumph on his dying face. ‘I am not a legionary of the White Scars. In truth, I do not know what I am anymore, but I will keep the old icons until I find out.’

Sonogei shook his head unhappily, but eventually took the armour piece back. ‘Bring me the rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Arvida bowed. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said.

He walked away. As he did so, the itch started up again, more vigorous than before. Arvida resisted the urge to scratch.

I knew Prospero would not claim me, he thought dryly, but this? After all I endured, to be eaten by our oldest curse?

He looked back to where Sonogei lifted the pauldron clear into the air. He briefly saw the star of his old Legion, bathed blood-red in both ink and forge-glow, and proud against a backdrop of flame.

It still stirred his soul. Even now, after all that had happened, he could not forget the oaths that he had made to that sigil.

It will not claim me, not yet. There will be a path, one I shall tread as a legionary of the Thousand Sons.

His confidence grew as he thought on it, just as it had done during the terrible days in ruined Tizca. He would find a way to elude it. There would be a cure, somewhere.

I will endure. I will remain. The last, the undefeated.

Then Revuel Arvida, of the Fourth Fellowship, Corvidae, ascended the stairs leading away from the forges. The Swordstorm’s warp drives thundered into life, taking him back to war, to the enemy, and a future that he had not yet learned to see.

About the Author

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Scars and The Path of Heaven, the novella Brotherhood of the Storm and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and the short story collection Wolves of Fenris, as well as the Space Marine Battles novels Wrath of Iron and Battle of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Time of Legends novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works near Bristol, in south-west England.

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