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Dreams of Unity – Nick Kyme

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

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Dreams of Unity

Nick Kyme

We are the thunder,
we are the lightning,
We were His first,
but now amongst the last,
We lived too long,
and now we wish to die,
The only death that matters,
the Honoured Death.

– Dahren Heruk, hymn of the Honoured Death

As I looked down onto the fight below, I knew Kabe was going to die. And I was powerless to do anything about it.

He would not yield. He roared, a broken jaw distorting his shout of defiance. The man trying to kill him remained undaunted. Even when Kabe spat blood onto his war-plate, the gold-clad warrior would not be goaded.

Instead, he levelled his spear and Kabe readied his falchion in kind. The sword’s blade had become a ragged saw, notched by repeated ineffectual blows against the other warrior’s armour. Kabe did not know how to lose. He had never retreated in his life. Even when the oligarchs of Kievan Rus had rained atomics from their black citadel and bathed the Sibir ice plain in radioactive fire, Kabe had advanced. He had fought without rest during the siege of Abyssna, and marched the length of Albia to bring the warlord clans of Hoth Grendal to heel.

‘For Unity!’ Kabe roared, his broken sword aloft in salute.

He charged, but his left leg failed him and he slipped, his body not as stubborn as his mind.

Kabe stopped when the spear impaled him, his armour easily pierced. The spear haft lodged in his guts, the leaf-bladed edge having punched right through and out of his back on the other side. He dangled there for a moment, blinking dumbly, before the gold-clad warrior kicked his body loose. Silence hung in the air, suspended by shock and disbelief.

Then the crowd roared. Light flooded the arena, a cold and harsh sodium glow that threw grim shadows over a shallow pit of sand and half-crushed bones.

Blood pooled under Kabe’s body. He trembled, still alive, mouth agape and trying to catch air like a landed fish.

‘Damn it,’ Tarrigata murmured. ‘It’s over then.’ The old man standing next to me suddenly looked frail. Perhaps it was the thought of the money he had lost betting on Kabe, or perhaps it was because his ludus had just lost another fighter. His once fine garments had begun to look a little threadbare of late.

I spared him a half-glance as I leaned in to the arena barrier, ignoring the jostling crowd around us. I saw enough grief in his face to suggest his apparent fragility stemmed from something deeper than a blow to his ever-diminishing revenue stream. Fewer and fewer patrons turned up to the fights these days. They had other concerns on their minds, about war, about the killings and the riots. For the rest, this was how they forgot.

The gold-clad warrior advanced, whirling around the spear as he poised to stab down at Kabe.

The crowd roared louder in anticipation of the kill.

‘Heruk, is it over?’ Tarrigata asked, and I felt his thin fingers brush against my naked arm. ‘I can still hear them baying. Is it over? Has that chrono-gladiator not killed him yet?’

‘Stay here,’ I said, and felt Tarrigata’s fingers fall away as I leapt the plate barrier and jumped into the arena. The sand underfoot scattered as I landed.

A few onlookers noticed me and began to chant. I heard my name and felt the chill of hollow glory that came with it. Battle was glorious, Mount Ararat when Arik Taranis raised the Lightning Banner and declared Unity, that was glorious. This was gutter glory. There was no honour is this.

The gold-clad warrior’s spear stabbed down before he realised there was another fighter in the ring. Kabe screamed, the leaf-blade stuck in his thigh. A second thrust pierced his shoulder and brought another scream.

‘If you’re going to kill him, kill him,’ I growled, glowering at the hulking warrior’s back.

We had all suffered enough already. This was needless.

The crowd roared louder, their faces hidden by the darkness now, and I was half-blinded by the glare of sodium lights anyway.

My eyes were better than Tarrigata’s, but they were not what they once had been. I blinked twice, trying to banish the blind spots as the warrior turned. A chrono-gladiator, over-muscled on stimms and sheathed in gold armour plate. I saw a parody of His Adeptus Custodes in the grossly swollen fighter before me and could not resist a smile. Down here beneath the Maw, we were far from the Throne’s light, but we still found humour despite our misery.

The death clock in the fighter’s forehead turned. His owner, Radik Clev, would be close and waiting with a key. Victory for the chrono would see another key turn in the death clock. More life for more life. That’s how it worked with a chrono. I only had meagre honour to fight for. What was that against trying to perpetuate one’s existence?

The spear turned, the change in grip unnecessarily elaborate, and it pointed at me. The chrono’s eyes were bloodshot, the veins threading the sclera describing madness. As the death clock ticked down, its strikes grew louder. Like a heartbeat. He bayed at me, more beast than man. The challenge was deep and vox-modulated enough to make it sound inhuman. But then again, I was not really human either.

I bared my teeth in a feral snarl, the rekindling of some old instinct, and drew a broad-bladed sword. My thumb activated the disruptor field, which flickered dangerously, once, twice, before snapping to consistency. Heat and ozone filled my nostrils. There was oil and blood, too, but that was coming off the chrono. And Kabe as he bled out. I could see him, reaching impotently for his broken falchion.

‘Should’ve just killed him,’ I said.

The chrono charged.

I rolled, swinging my broad-blade behind me as I made to move. I heard the crowd gasp and felt the spear miss my head by a few inches. Back on my feet, I managed to turn and see the spear before it gutted me. A hasty parry deflected it aside, but I had been lucky. And too slow.

A second thrust almost wrenched away my sword, the strength behind the blow horrific enough to rock me on my heels. I rolled again, old bones and tired muscles beginning to work. This time I came up faster, inside the chrono’s guard and well within the reach of the spear. I hacked at the crease in the chrono’s arm, at the elbow. It wasn’t a bad wound, but his armour was weak in that spot and my blade bit deep. The chrono howled and his grip on the spear faltered. Hard to hold on to something that long and heavy when your tendons are screaming.

He swung the haft crosswise, and though I had prepared for the riposte, it still stung like the impact from a shock grenade and I was smashed across the arena floor.

Cheers erupted from the crowd. I ignored them.

My blurring vision fixed on my enemy.

Bleeding oil and blood, the chrono stomped towards me. He held the spear close to his body and used his other hand to steady it. That would impede his reach. He was six feet away, about to thrust, when I flung my broad-blade. It spun in the air, the slightly curved edge and weighted pommel enhancing the velocity of the throw. It struck the chrono’s centre mass, breaching the gold breastplate and making a mess of whatever was beneath.

He stared dumbfounded, the spear still poised as if recorded via a pict-feed abruptly set to pause, before slumping to his knees and dropping his weapon. Scooping up Kabe’s sword, I stepped in and swiftly cut off the chrono’s head. The death clock struck zero, presaging a now impotent cardiac impulse that would have killed him on the spot were he not already headless.

As the crowd went insane at the spectacle, hollering and spitting vicarious fury, I retrieved my blade and then knelt beside Kabe to return his.

I looked down at the blood pool and saw myself reflected there. Tall, thickly muscled and wearing leather half-armour, I had a warrior’s bearing. Facial scarring gave me character some said, and shaved blond hair spoke of a military background. My body was unmarked, apart from the lightning bolt tattoo on my left shoulder. My blue eyes flashed with some of their old vigour. I have been told I am handsome by conventional standards. Vanity was never my curse. I have seen it affect others, allies and enemies. It didn’t change how they died. Death is ugly. It makes no allowances for appearance.

‘Brother…’ I said, gently putting the falchion in Kabe’s grasping hand. He seemed to settle, though his mouth still worked in a futile parody of speech.

‘There’s blood in your lungs, Kabe. Don’t try to speak. Be still. It’s almost over now.’

He looked at me and the fear in his eyes changed to something approaching peace.

I placed the tip of my sword against his heart. With my other hand, I touched the faded lightning bolt tattoo inked onto his left shoulder.

‘The honoured death…’ I whispered. Kabe gave a near imperceptible nod. I thrust, and it was done.

Tarrigata met me on the other side of the arena wall. He looked thin in the stark lights, as if his flesh were partly translucent. He sniffed at the air as I clambered over, head tilted to the side so his left ear angled towards me.

‘Is that Kabe? He stinks. Smells dead already.’

I leaned in close, grimacing with Kabe’s dead weight across my right shoulder.

‘Show respect for the Thunder Legion,’ I hissed through clenched teeth.

Despite my massive advantage in both height and weight, Tarrigata looked untroubled.

‘Pah! You’re gladiators now, Heruk.’

‘Old man, I swear I’ll–’ I began.

‘Fewer customers today,’ remarked Tarrigata, breezing past my hollow threat as if it were a fly landed on his collar to be swatted away. ‘A quieter mob.’

‘Fewer everyone,’ I said. ‘Even the great Thunder Legion can’t draw a crowd, eh?’

‘No crowds to draw,’ said Tarrigata. He sniffed, his withered old nostrils flaring. ‘Fear is in the air. Dark dealings abound.’

I snorted at that, having heard Tarrigata’s conspiracies many times before.

‘Besides,’ the old man went on, a cruel smile on his face, ‘you’re not Legion. You haven’t been Legion since Ararat.’

‘He’s right, Heruk. We are nothing now. Just arena fighters, and Tarrigata our dominus.’

‘We are more than that, Vez,’ I said, looking into the eyes of the bearded giant who had just stepped in front of me.

Vezulah Vult carried more scars than any warrior I have known or killed. He wore them proudly. As big as I was, he stood a head taller, his torso and shoulders like an inverted triangle.

‘Are we, Dah?’

I scowled. ‘At least we’re surviving. Here,’ I gently set Kabe down, ‘help me with him.’ Around the arena, a few of the crowd had lingered to catch a glimpse of the fallen gladiator but most had already begun to disperse, back to the Maw, back to their own personal misery.

‘Such a waste,’ spat Tarrigata, and rattled the coin purse that he carried looped to the belt around his waist. He shook it three times, listening.

‘It’s light,’ I said.

‘Don’t need you to tell me that!’ snapped Tarrigata, whirling on me. He jabbed a wizened finger to the hollow sockets of his eyes. ‘I might have lost my eyes, but I still see plenty. Touched by Him above, I was,’ he said, gesturing to the thickening smog that blanketed our sky. I followed with my eye and saw the vague shapes of statues looming like gods.

‘Your eyes were burned as an astropath, Tarrigata,’ I said.

‘That’s why you should listen when I say dark things are afoot, even here in the Maw. I have seen them… from the beyond.’

‘And you are hunted just like the rest of us vermin,’ I added.

Tarrigata showed his yellowed teeth with an ugly smile. ‘Aye, but you still serve, don’t you?’

‘The Legion ever serves,’ Vezulah replied. His voice sounded different as he reached for the axe tethered at his waist.

I seized his arm. ‘Hold, brother,’ I told him firmly. ‘The war is over.’

He looked through me at some latter day battlefield, his eyes clouded and unblinking.

‘Kalagann has mustered a host on the wastes…’ He struggled against my grip and I clenched tighter, my old Legion ring biting into his skin. ‘The hordes of Ursh will fall this day!’

A few stragglers amongst the crowd had turned to look at what was going on.

‘The butchers of Sibir will yield to the Emperor!’

‘They already did. Long ago,’ I said. ‘Take hold of your senses, Vez. Look at me. Look at me.’

He turned, blinked once and released his grip on the axe. I released him.

‘Did I drift again?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Where to this time?’

‘Ursh, the Sibir ice plain.’

Vezulah looked down as if to calculate what this fresh slip of his sanity meant for the long term.

‘Are you back, brother?’ I asked. ‘In the here and now?’

‘I am… I am.’

I felt Tarrigata relax behind me, and heard the rad pistol he carried under his robes powering down. He’d never fired it and I wondered how much of its degrading energy coil was leaking lethal radiation into the old man, but he wouldn’t be parted from it. The last of the crowd moved on, seemingly disappointed.

A timeworn shanty town lay just off the outskirts of the arena. Known as the Swathe, it stretched for miles across the Outer Palace districts, an agglomeration of broken ships, industry-grade cargo containers, armour plate and anything else that fell from the smog-choked sky. Tarrigata’s hab was the largest in the underbelly, and built to impress. Like the man who owned it, the hab had seen more prosperous times. He was a beggar-king rapidly reverting back to just a beggar.

‘Get him up,’ said Tarrigata, meaning Kabe’s corpse, ‘take what you can use and burn the rest. I don’t want scavengers coming around.’ He turned, listening again, sniffing at the air.

‘And for frek’s sake, where is Gairok? I should smell the stink of unrefined alc-grain by now. He’s bloody due.’

Underneath an awning outside a granite stoop was a heavy wooden slab. Wood is rare, especially in the Swathe. Tarrigata used it as a mortuary block. He said the wood soaked up the blood, which it did. The slab was run through with dark stains, like a patchy veneer.

Vezulah and I set Kabe’s body on it.

‘The next fight isn’t for a few hours yet,’ I said, breaking out the saws and other surgical tools from a caged rack set up next to the mortuary block. I handed one to Vezulah who began to cut. ‘He’ll be here.’

‘He had better be,’ said Tarrigata. ‘A death and a no-show… I’ll be ruined!’

‘Down here, how will any of us ever tell the difference?’ I muttered, watching Tarrigata climb up the stoop and into his hab.

Vezulah worked. He had already cut away Kabe’s armour, his trappings, and was harvesting the organs now. We were ghouls, those of us who remained. Our continued existence depended on the deaths and successful appropriation of the parts of our former brothers in arms.

As well as being our dominus, Tarrigata possessed the means and craft to transplant those parts. In that respect at least, the relationship was mutually dependant.

Dwelling on the notion of what we had all become, I looked up through a ragged tear in the awning. Yellow cloud cast a filthy pall over everything, but below it I saw the screw-thread circles of the Maw, all the way from uphive to this nadir. If the Maw was the well leading down from Terra above, then the Swathe was the effluvia caught at the bottom.

Factorums and refineries and bullet farms clung to the rings of the Maw like diseased limpets attached to the gullet of a deep sea leviathan. Occasionally, one of these structures would fall, cast down to us dregs, and so the shanties would slowly expand, colonising the basin like some septic growth.

Terra looked very different from down here.

‘I still dream of glory, Dah,’ said Vezulah. His voice dragged me back to the present. I feared he might be slipping again, but his eyes were lucid as he butchered Kabe. Machine parts, as well as glistening organs sat amongst the useless offal. Work, even red work, helped to focus the mind.

He paused, the knife edge dripping, his arms crimson all the way to the elbow. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether this or the living present is my reality.’

‘I understand,’ I said softly. ‘All too well.’

Deep down, I know. In my marrow, in my cancer-ridden core, I know.

‘The old days are gone, I know that,’ said Vezulah. ‘The days of the storm, of Unity. They were killing days, red days, of war and conquest. Empires kneeled to Him, they kneeled to us…’ He paused, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the handle of the saw but making no cut. ‘I miss them.’

‘So do I, Vez. But we are not what we once were. We have lived too long. It’s just some of us are too stubborn to die.’

I took the machine parts, Kabe’s old cybernetics, and started to wash them down using an old handle-operated pump. The liquid was unfit to drink and irritated the skin, but it got rid of the blood just fine. The organs went into large apothecary flasks, and were preserved in a viscous solution of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and methanol. This I had learned from Tarrigata.

‘You can take those, now,’ said Vezulah. ‘I can manage the burning alone.’ A furnace stood at the back of Tarrigata’s property. Kabe’s final rest.

I nodded, hefting the organ flask, then asked. ‘You are yourself, brother?’

‘I am myself.’

‘And if you are ever not?’

Vezulah met my gaze. His eyes looked steady but resigned. ‘Then grant me the honoured death.’

‘The honoured death,’ I replied, and headed for Tarrigata’s hab.

Inside the hab, the darkness took a little getting used to. It was cramped, the ceiling so low that I had to stoop. Tarrigata was a hoarder. He had shelves of machine parts from old gladiators, and jars of briny liquid filled with slowly atrophying organs. He kept everything regardless of its use. I found him sitting at a battered plastek chair, bent-backed and frowning over his counting device.

‘Radik Clev will seek recompense for his loss,’ he told me, before leaning back to take a draw of his kiseru. A plume of smoke issued from the long-necked pipe, the hairs in the bowl flaring brightly as Tarrigata sucked at them. ‘In turn, this debt shall come to you.’

‘I am sorry, dominus,’ I said, setting down the apothecary flasks wherever I could find space.

‘You killed his fighter, so there is that,’ added Tarrigata, ‘and you also illegally interrupted Kabe’s bout. For that, too, I must pay.’

‘Again, I am sorry.’

‘Sorry does not pay debts!’ he snapped, and a coughing fit wracked his body.

I went to help but Tarrigata warded me off with a trembling hand. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve when the fit was over, before taking a long, shuddering pull of his kiseru.

‘I will make amends,’ I said.

Tarrigata slowly nodded. ‘Yes, you will. Go into the Swathe. Find Gairok. Bring him here or the organ supply will dry up.’

Such things we must do to survive.

‘You have my word, dominus,’ I said, bowing as I made to leave.

‘I don’t care about your word, or your honour, Heruk. Just bring him. And do it fast.’

A vessel hovered just above the smog layer. Its sleek contours shone golden in the light of uphive. A Coronus grav-carrier. It had come from the Tower of Hegemon on a special mission appointed by Valdor himself.

A single warrior sat within the shadowy hold, alone with his thoughts until that moment, his golden battle-helm in both hands.

‘Ever since Nas’sau have we fought for Terra,’ said a voice through the warrior’s vox-link, the first he had heard in several hours.

He looked up, green eyes as vivid and bright as emerald. The hold doors began to open, admitting light and atmosphere.

‘You know what has to be done?’ asked the voice.

The warrior nodded. ‘I am clear in my duty.’

‘Find them, Tagiomalchian.’

Tagiomalchian donned his helmet, and a flurry of systems flickered to life across the retinal display.

He stood, securing his sentinel blade and storm shield. He then attached a monofilament wire to his armour. It was fed by a long spool bolted to the hold, and mag-locked to the auramite with a dull tunk. Tagiomalchian approached the yawning hold doors, the wire unspooling as he walked. He perched on the edge, cloak whipping in the breeze, and looked down into the smog-layer. His eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his helm.

‘I will find them,’ he whispered, before stepping off into oblivion.

The Abyssna burned. I couldn’t see it, the smoke was obscuring my vision, but I could smell it and hear it. The burning flesh of the soldiers inside, the crack of stone as the walls baked in the inferno and the shrilling of screams. Unity had come.

Thick ash swept across killing fields outside a grand fortress now swollen with the prince’s dead. Their sortie had failed to break our lines and reach our siege guns. The Imperial Army artillerymen, also lost to my sight, had kept up a relentless barrage. Such violent music. My heart beat with it, soaring from its thunderous melody.

Now we pushed, and pushed hard. The Afrik sun blazed. I sweltered in my heavy armour, and the heat from my skin began to fog my visor. Vezulah stood nearby, calling the charge, summoning even greater fury from the Thunder Legion and the heat intensified.

We ran, having left our grav-ships behind, bolters running hot with continued use.

A round clipped my shoulder guard, penetrated and bit into flesh. I snarled, using anger to quash the pain, and looked to the Lightning Banner. It was almost all I could see through the smoke that wasn’t right in front of me.

Somewhere in its vicinity fought the Emperor. Even His presence, remote and unseen, galvanised me. For a few seconds, the smoke thinned and I caught the flash of gold amidst the grey.

‘There,’ said the voice of Gairok behind me, and I felt his gauntleted hand on my arm subtly directing me. ‘Custodians… Lions in the guise of men.’

‘So it’s said.’

‘Shall we show them how the Thunder Legion fights?’ he asked, and I turned to see his toothy grin.

I had no time to admire their bloody skill at arms before the smoke swallowed them again.

‘Aye, brother!’

Gairok laughed, loud and bold, heedless of the bullets coming at us through the smoke. He gestured into the greyness.

‘Then here’s your chance!’

A deep, resounding crack announced the felling of the northern tower.

‘Let us ram a gladius straight down prince cretin’s throat, eh, Dah?’

Then we were running, our entire cohort, as Vezulah sounded a fresh charge.

‘Do you even know his name, Gairok?’ I asked.

Gairok shook his head. ‘So many petty barons, oligarchs and warlords, what does it matter? All will kneel and embrace Unity, or die. Now we show them how.’

The northern tower fell with slow, inexorable grace. It carved through the smoke like a sword, crumbling and disintegrating with every plummeting foot. The crash when it finally struck the ground shook the battlefield like an earthquake, dispersing huge swathes of smoke and revealing our enemy.

Pale-faced and sweating in grey uniforms under brass breastplates and wearing spiked helms, they looked determined but afraid. They ranked up in files and took careful aim.

Sporadic weapons fire scythed from the breach in the Abyssna’s wall. Mainly carbines and the odd energy cannon. Shields raised, our cohort advanced.

‘Let the reaping begin!’ roared Gairok, and I felt his battle fervour infect me.

I swept through the gap in the wall, leaping over rubble and the wounded trapped under it, and set about those who could still fight.

Bellowing, I cut off a rifleman’s head. I caught a glimpse of Gairok, who cried out, ‘The Afrik sun is hotter in the breach, eh, Dah!’ His blade was reddest of all. Our charge had decimated the defenders. Their ranks buckled, then broke. And then I heard Vezulah shouting. Horns were blowing. Victory neared, but the bloodletting was far from over. I killed two men with a single thrust, impaling both on my sword, but the dead dragged down my arm and I caught a glancing blow to the skull. I felt my helm crack. It had saved my life, but dizziness pushed me to my knees. I spat blood, shook off the pain and nausea, and looked up…

I found myself in the Silo, with a burly, half-armoured warrior standing over me. Gone was the Afrik sun, and in its place the dinginess of a lower Swathe dive bar. The warrior had craggy features, with a bald scar-laced scalp, and brandished a metal hook. It had the look of an improvised weapon.

Gone the power armour he once wore, a studded leather hauberk now served in its place.

‘Gairok…’ I slurred his name as I tried to piece together the fragments of what had happened between leaving Tarrigata’s and this moment.

Rather than strike me down, Gairok offered his hand. His skin shone red in the flickering lumen light.

‘Stand, brother,’ he said. Aspirated blood spattered his face. The veins in his neck bulged, and he breathed with feverish intensity. The grin that cut a white crescent in his features looked forced. Pained.

‘Gairok,’ I said again, standing and looking around. The dead surrounded us, gutted and torn up, all the wretched patrons of the Silo. The sweet, cloying scent of alc-grain mingled with the coppery stench of blood. The floor of the bar shone with it.

‘Did you… did you do this, Gairok?’ I asked, and felt the reassuring grip of my short sword as I slid it from the scabbard.

Gairok blinked, once, twice. His eyes were bloodshot. Sweat lathered his skin. I saw it almost glitter in the lumen light. His grin became a frown, a rabid beast struggling to comprehend its illness. How far was I from such a fate? The hand that gripped the hook tightened, and I felt my body tense.

He had been vital, strong of mind and purpose. I didn’t recognise the man in front of me.

‘Where are you, Gairok?’ I asked, trying to ignore the blood.

I have never seen him so weak. Gairok held the breach at Abyssna. He fought on the Sibir ice plain when the atomics rained down.

‘The Afrik sun is hotter in the breach, Dah,’ he said, but his mind was absent and his words a pale echo of those spoken to me years ago.

‘This isn’t the Abyssna, brother. Gairok… where are you? Try to think.’

He cast about, lost, searching the dead. None answered. ‘Sibir… No… hnng…’ He pressed a hand against his skull as if trying to keep his tattered sanity from spilling out, until his words slurred beyond comprehension.

Then he came at me with the hook, eyes wild, spitting froth.

‘Unity!’ he cried, barely articulate, a moan of despair as much as it was a remembered shout of triumph.

I blocked the overhand blow with my forearm, though Gairok’s strength was ferocious. With the other hand I slid out my short sword and rammed it deep into my brother’s chest. He struggled at first, madness lending him strength, until I carved and carved, and the blood and innards sluiced out onto the dirty floor. Gairok grew limp and I cradled his body to the ground to stop him from falling.

As he lay there amidst the dismembered corpses of his madness, I gently withdrew my blade.

Blood bubbled in the froth on Gairok’s lips. It reminded me of Kabe.

He blinked again, and I saw some lucidity return in his eyes.

‘We were… not meant… to last.’

The last of his life choked out of him and I held him until it was over. There was blood on his Legion tattoo and I wiped it away before I could no longer hold up my head.

I knew Kabe, I had fought alongside him as a sword-brother, but Gairok had been my friend. I wept for his passing, choking to death in some dirty Swathe bar.

‘Where is the honour for us?’ I asked the darkness, but silence answered.

My own words came back to me then.

We have lived too long.

I got to my feet, heavy with grief, and hauled Gairok onto my back. I wouldn’t leave him here, not like this. Something was wrong with us. I hoped Tarrigata would know what to do.

Tagiomalchian descended through a cloud of smog. The monofilament wire held him steady, thin enough to be invisible to the naked eye, robust enough to harbour a load many times his weight.

Drawn up over armour, the falsehood Tagiomalchian wore kept him hidden from sight.

A counter cycled down on his retinal display. When it hit fifty feet, he disengaged the mag-clamp and fell the rest of the way to the ground. A tiny grav pulse built into his armour cushioned his landing and he rose up from a crouched position to cast his gaze across the vast shanty town before him.

‘Landfall achieved. I remain undetected,’ he said, the sound of his voice baffled by the ambient neutralisers built into his helm array.

The same voice from the Coronus replied, similarly shrouded. Only Tagiomalchian could hear it.

‘Target location identified,’ it said over the vox. A hololithic schematic overlaid the terrain Tagiomalchian saw through his retinal lenses. ‘Your quarry is in the Swathe.’

‘Status request.’

‘Covert.’

‘Duration?’

‘As long as possible. Until detected.’

‘Kill or capture?’

‘Kill. And eradicate all trace.’

‘Confirmed. Request data inload.’

It took a few seconds. A small beacon lit up on the hololithic render.

‘Deeper than I thought,’ Tagiomalchian murmured, not intending to be heard but the baffle also focused vox-audio to the listener.

‘It’s a warren, Tagiomalchian, and there are rats lurking within.’

‘Then I had best start digging.’

Sump harvesters plied the chemical soup coagulating at the edge of the Swathe. Their nets and hooks dragged and snapped for salvage. Smoking ragsticks, coughing up their cancer-ridden lungs, slowly dying from the toxins in their blood, they gave no heed to the golden warrior striding in their midst. They didn’t even blink.

Gairok was a heavy burden, and it took several hours to reach the arena. As I neared the outskirts, I saw the smoke. Tarrigata’s hab was in flames. Laying down Gairok’s body, I drew my sword and ran. I thought it might be the work of Radik Clev, retaliation for what I had done to his chrono-gladiator. Upon entering the shanty town, I knew it wasn’t revenge. Madness reigned here. I found the dead. Eviscerated, beheaded and dismembered, they littered the place, ripped up like a butcher’s leavings.

A pressure began to build behind my temples and I pressed a hand to my head to ward it off. Pain, like a fathomless dive into a deep ocean, threatened to put me down, but I resisted. I smelled smoke, from Tarrigata’s hab, from the Abyssna and struggled to tell which was real and which was not.

A chill pricked my face, but I knew the atmosphere in the Swathe was sweltering. I remembered the Sibir ice plain and dared not look up for fear of seeing the atomics falling again. Then I was at Ararat, bellowing with Arik Tyrannis as he raised the Lightning Banner.

And then Hy Brasil and Ursh and Albia.

My skull throbbed. The dreams of Unity were relentless, and I powerless to command them.

In the end I focused on my sword, and held it tight across my body, thinking of its solidity, its permanence, its reality.

I resurfaced from the dream, sweating, skin burning with fever. I was on my knees, a watery pool of sick in front of me. I spat the taste of it from my mouth and hurried to Tarrigata’s hab. As I kicked down the door, heat and smoke assailed me. I hadn’t seen Vezulah during the frantic rush through the shanty and wondered if I would find him within, blood-mad like Gairok had been. I plunged inside, holding my breath, and warding my face with my forearm.

A few of the shelves had collapsed, either in the heat or during some struggle that had preceded this mess. I hacked through one, vaulted another until I found Tarrigata on his side, choking from smoke inhalation.

He turned his head at my approach. Fear contorted his face. He cried out, a pathetic, plaintive sound, as I swept in and gathered up his frail body into my arms. Thin fingers raked at my skin like needles. He fought, but with the strength of an enfeebled child.

‘Be still,’ I warned him, ‘or we’ll both die in this shit hole.’

His struggles eased, either at the sound of my voice or because he had used up what fight he had left. The fire was rising, spreading across the walls and ceiling. It crawled like a mudslide, hungrily devouring everything it touched. I heard shattering glass and realised the flasks were slowly cooking off. The chemical mixtures within would act as an accelerant.

Cradling Tarrigata against my body, I smashed headlong through the back of the hab and kicked through the rear door to emerge on the other side. We had barely made it six feet when the old shack and furnace exploded, sending up a plume of fiery debris and smoke into the air.

No crowd had gathered. Everyone was either dead or in hiding.

I carried Tarrigata clear and set him down on an old threadbare chair. Its arms were missing and patches of the synth-leather had flaked away to reveal mildewed sponge beneath. His breath rattled, and his skin looked so pallid that I knew he didn’t have long.

‘Where is Vezulah?’ I asked him firmly.

The old man’s head lolled to the side and I gently grasped it by the chin, turning it to face me.

‘Tarrigata, you’re dying. I’m sorry. But I need to know.’

Sudden urgency gripped him and he lurched towards me, mouth working but the words struggling to come at first. I leaned in, so the old man could whisper his truth into my ear.

‘He’s… he’s coming.’

Then he slumped back, sagging like a deflated lung and stirred no more.

‘He’s not. Vez is gone.’

I looked down and saw he had pressed the rad pistol into my hands. I didn’t know if he meant for to use it on myself or Vezulah, but I took it and put it in the empty holster attached to my weapons belt.

I tore a strip of cloth from under my armour to wrap around Tarrigata’s eyeless sockets. Tying the blindfold in place, I took a deep breath and laid my hand upon his forehead.

‘You old bastard, you tried to stop him didn’t you?’

Standing, I looked down on Tarrigata’s withered body. Death had diminished him.

‘That’s my burden now. I’ll stop him. I’ll end it.’

Tagiomalchian swept unseen through the narrow alleyways and tunnels of the Swathe. He moved swiftly, the locator beacon flashing in his retinal lens growing closer with every second. In the distance, black smoke plumed into the sky, casting a funerary pall.

He found the first real evidence of his quarry at a dive bar that had been transformed into a charnel house. The heady stench of low-grade alc-grain and cooled viscera invaded his nostrils. He let it. As an Ephroi he had been trained to seek out evidence. He smelled transhuman blood, then engaged the internal vox.

‘Could be Legion,’ he said, ‘those who escaped the purge.’

‘Proceed with caution.’

Tagiomalchian nodded to himself. He knelt down to turn over one of the ragged bodies. His eyes drew to slits behind his retinal lenses.

‘That’s interesting…’ It looked like a burn mark in the shape of–

A nagging sense of wrongness made Tagiomalchian turn. He had barely reached for his sword when he was smashed off his feet.

I followed the trail Vezulah had left. It wasn’t hard, and I wondered if in some part of his still-lucid mind that he wanted me to find him. To end him. I hoped I could, I hoped I could stave off the madness that had turned Gairok and Vezulah too.

I thought of Tarrigata, of the old man choking half to death as he fled for life. I could not reconcile with Vezulah being responsible for that. Even drifting as he often did, Vezulah would not have raised a hand to the old man. But perhaps he didn’t know. The dreams, I had felt them. Vivid, persuasive. The desire for past glory was an effective blindfold.

I ran through the Swathe, getting fearful looks from its inhabitants. The dregs lingered here in the deeps and they wanted to be left alone in misery and squalor. Some brandished weapons, ready to defend their sorry lives, but they were empty threats. Others took refuge in their hovels, hunkering down and shutting their eyes, as if waiting for a storm to pass.

In an ancient part of the district, I found a Legion mark carved into a stone stairwell. The old lightning bolt led me downwards into a catacomb. I knew this place. It was called the Flood, the deepest part of the Swathe. Ancient columns streaked with grime rose up to a curved and vaulted ceiling. It had been beautiful once, but as with so many things age had stolen its glory. Parts of the Flood had collapsed, surrendering to the agglomerated weight of the levels above. I clambered over a sloping heap of debris, slewed across my path like a bulging sack had split its stitches and spewed into the main thoroughfare, its contents left to sit where they may. I seldom came here. I had no cause, but wondered what Vezulah’s might be.

‘Is this our last battlefield, brother?’ I asked of the dark, and was surprised when it answered.

‘I have fought my last battle already, Dah.’

I found him leaning against the curved catacomb wall, a hand across his stomach holding everything in. Something wet and dark gleamed between Vezulah’s trembling fingers. His broken axe lay next to his body, the blade acid-burned in two.

‘Vez…’ I knelt down beside him. He looked deathly in the flickering glow of the overhead phosphor lamps.

‘Are you armed?’ he rasped.

I frowned, about to gesture to my drawn sword and the broad-blade strapped to my back when I realised Vezulah was blind. A milky sheen covered his eyes, and there were burn marks around the sockets and across his face.

‘Acid…’ he said, correctly assuming the reason for my silence. ‘Forgot they could do that.’ He laughed, but the effort cost him. ‘He gave them all the gifts, didn’t He. And left us to fester and rot.’ He reached out and grabbed my arm, fumbling with his blindness. ‘We should not have lasted this long.’

I held his head to the light, trying to examine the ghastly injuries to his face. He resisted as if ashamed of his condition.

‘The gut wound is fatal,’ he hissed, teeth clenched with a sudden flare of pain.

‘Who did this?’ I asked, and let him go. I peered into the darkness but found no attackers lurking.

‘They were among us, Dah,’ he said. ‘Hiding in the Swathe. I fought them. They ran and led me here. Left me to die.’ He grimaced, and I felt the pull of Vezulah’s mortal thread growing taut.

‘Who, brother? Who hid from us?’

‘A mark, red-raw, like a brand…’ He pointed to his left cheek, his finger lathered in blood. ‘They said his name. Said…’

I grabbed his armoured collar, and wrenched him to me.

‘Tell me, brother! Let me avenge you.’

‘Said… he is coming.’

Vezulah let out a long shuddering breath, and it was over.

I had been wrong. Vezulah hadn’t slaughtered the settlement or left Tarrigata to die. But someone had.

Head bowed, I shut my eyes and felt the heft of the rad pistol against my leg. I considered drawing it. My fingers closed around the grip. A single shot, if it could still fire. Left temple.

I opened my eyes and let the pistol go.

‘For Unity…’ I muttered, and laid my Legion ring in Vezulah’s lap.

‘The enemy within.’ A mark, a name. That’s what Vezulah had said. I had heard stories, most of them from Tarrigata. War was coming. Some said it had already arrived, that traitors were among us.

At the faint clash of steel I looked up.

I got to my feet and ran through the catacombs, chasing the sounds of battle.

Tagiomalchian limped into the catacombs, ignoring the pain beneath his cracked auramite armour. A shredded falsehood lay somewhere in his wake. The cloak had proven ineffective against his quarry, which had sensed him by unnatural means. Its blood, or what passed for blood, slicked the edge of his sentinel blade. The weapon weighed heavy in his grasp. So did the shield on his back, and he knew that the creature had hurt him. But he had also hurt it.

‘Mark my location,’ he said into the vox.

‘You sound injured.’

Tagiomalchian gritted his teeth. ‘Mark it.’

A brief pause suggested another enquiry was coming, but in the end it didn’t materialise. Instead, a different interrogative.

‘Are you close, Tagiomalchian?’

‘I am.’

‘Is it them?’

Few knew of the attack on the Throneworld by the Alpha Legion. In the end it had been contained and the immediate threat neutralised. Concerns remained. There had been ‘incidents’. One at the Plaintive Reach watch station had been difficult to suppress. Rumours had leaked out into the districts. Madness swept throughout Terra. The Warmaster was coming. Sympathisers had sprung up in the populace. Cults. A purge had been ordered, a cleansing fire in the face of the oncoming corruption.

The harbingers of that corruption stood before Tagiomalchian.

‘It’s them,’ he said, and shut off the vox.

Tagiomalchian had emerged into the flickering light of a subterranean hall. The tunnels had led him here. An icy chill touched him even through his armour. The hall’s original purpose had been obscured by time and invention. An old bathhouse, perhaps, its rusted copper pipes still visible but only partially intact. A pair of handle-driven pumps shaped into the mouths of heraldic gryphonnes fed a deep basin, but were seized in place by decay. Flaking filigree spoke of mythic seaborne beasts but those artistic images had been perverted.

Something more ancient and primal stood in this place now. Torches burned eagerly in iron sconces, letting off a cloying scent of fouled meat and sour milk. A rimy scum of blood, not water, ringed the edge of the basin where a symbol had been crudely drawn in a tarry black substance. Candles guttered, clumped like overgrown weeds. Their waxy stems gave off the stink of animal fat.

Tagiomalchian raised his sword. Gilded whorls and ornate intaglio caught the light. A crackle of energy ran up the blade.

A short row of steps led up to the old bathhouse dais. Dark streaks ran down the grimy stone. It waited for him here, as he knew it would be waiting ever since it had tasted his blood. A ragged black cloak sat around its armoured shoulders, draped over scaled war-plate the colour of forgotten seas. Strange, organic spines poked through its sackcloth mantle. It needed no weapons. Its fingers ended in long talons that had tasted Tagiomalchian’s blood. It had been a legionary once, but now something else had taken residence in the mortal flesh it wore.

‘Abomination,’ declared Tagiomalchian, unhurried as he climbed the steps and so calm he could have been commenting on the weather. His gaze stayed on the legionary, but he was also aware of the robed figures by its side. Eight men and women. Though they were hooded, and stood over several bodies in the basin. Partly clotted blood rimed the drainage grate, clinging to the metal and darkening the rust at the edges.

The robed figures each bore the brand of the hydra on their cheek, so did the dead. Willing sacrifices. Each mark looked freshly made and raw, just like the one Tagiomalchian had seen in the dive bar before he had been attacked.

A ritual circle had been drawn in the black tar. He was to be sacrificed. The Emperor’s blood flowed in his veins, potent and preternatural. That had meaning for these depraved creatures and the thing they served.

Amongst the robed supplicants, a demagogue stepped forwards.

‘He is coming,’ the woman uttered, without zeal as if she were simply speaking a fact.

‘Lupercal,’ the rest replied.

‘Lupercal,’ the cultists chimed as one.

‘Lupercal,’ echoed the legionary. He spoke in two voices in opposite registers. Then he leapt at Tagiomalchian.

I heard the crash of metal hitting stone, the sound of an armoured body borne down by something bigger and heavier. Flickering torchlight beckoned at the tunnel edge and the hint of a larger chamber began to come into being.

I smelled the ice plains again, heard the wind and fought to keep the old dreams at bay. Whatever had had its way in the Swathe, had killed Vezulah and led to Tarrigata’s death was here. I alone could reckon that debt and avenge the dead.

The rad pistol slapped at my thigh as I ran. The broad-blade felt leaden in my grasp, old muscles protesting even before this last battle. I ignored the pain and activated the disruptor. It flared then failed. I tried again, still running, about to break through an archway and into the light. It flickered and held. The actinic crackle running along the blade tanged my mouth as though an electric current had just been laid across my tongue.

I breached the cordon of light and saw a golden warrior on his back, and a thing that defied understanding hacking at him with dagger-length talons. I knew the warrior, if not by name. A Custodian of the Emperor. I had fought beside them during the wars for Unity.

He half turned at my approach, expecting another enemy, but powerless to do anything about it if I was. His faceplate was impassive, but his struggle was far more obvious. The beast, the part-legionary, part-mutant that thrashed at the Custodian paid me no heed at all.

The eight figures on the bloody dais above them did and turned at once, opening their robes to reveal long, curved blades. Cultists.

Tarrigata, you old bastard. You were right after all…

Howling madness, they came at me.

I gutted the first, impaling him on the end of my sword. The disruptor field blew the body apart. Skin, bone and organs evaporated. The others seemed undeterred despite the spattering of gore. As I hacked the arm off one, I felt a blade cut into my bicep. It went deep and I stifled a growl of pain. Never show your weakness, the arena had taught me that. Another blade bit into my back. Now I roared. They had me surrounded. I felt the dreams of Unity pull at my mind. If I drifted now, I died, and so did the Custodian. Weakened, he struggled to fight back. The beast gored at him like prey it had brought down from the hunt. A few more minutes and it would be over.

I swung my arm, feeling a solid hit and the sharp crack of bone as one of the cultists flew like a broken spear haft and crashed somewhere out of my immediate sight. Holding the broad-blade one-handed, I drew my short sword and staked another into the ground. Despite his mania, the wretch began to wail.

I finished off the partly dismembered cultist next, my skull splitting hers open like an egg. A wild slash of my broad-blade brought death to another, a disembowelling blow that sluiced the ground with his guts. Stamping on the one I had staked a moment before left two still standing.

The first rushed me, curved blade swinging. I extended a savage kick into his torso hard enough to penetrate the ribcage and snap through the spine. My boot came through his back and I had to shake off the ragged corpse. The last, the leader I think, slit her throat rather than face me, her body falling off the dais and into the empty basin to join the other bodies below.

Now the beast turned and in its gaze I saw something fathomless and evil. And I knew, in my marrow, it was no beast. At least, not of the natural order. All the stories I had heard, of the darkness coming to Terra, of the pacts made with beings older than the Imperium, I believed them.

Evil was amongst us, defying the Emperor’s rule of order. And I served the Emperor. I always have. I always will. It is my oath. It is the thunder and the lightning.

It threw the Custodian aside, casting him off like tough meat forgotten in preference of a sweeter kill. I brandished my sword.

‘For Unity!’ I roared.

We charged at each other, man against beast.

It struck like a tank, smashing me off my feet. My sword had barely cut a groove in armour that resembled arachnid carapace only many times more robust.

I staggered up, sword as heavy as a tombstone, skull pounding.

The Sibir ice plain…

Smoke drifting from the Abyssna…

Shaking off the dreams, I scarcely parried a slashing talon. It had prodigious strength, the repelled blow nearly jolted loose my shoulder, but its presence felt… wrong. A deeper malaise, more than just physical pain began to wear at me. Old voices of the dead, visions of carnage yet to come. My own ignominious death, sacrificed to some entity from beyond…

I cried out, and realised its talons ripped at my flesh, taking a butcher’s fill. I swung, cutting off a hand or a claw. The appendage flopped to the ground, flipped from back to front and then scuttled, spider-like into the shadows.

Such horrors, I had barely seen the like.

I backed away and knew I was dying, not from the wasting of my limbs and mind, but from the wound it had dealt. I felt it. I knew it.

I barely had the strength remaining to lift my sword. I had dropped the other blade. It had scattered away into the same shadows where the spider-hand had sought refuge.

I slashed wildly, trying to hold off the beast. It laughed at my efforts, its voice inhuman enough to set the hairs on the back of my neck on end. Then I reached down, out of instinct or by design I could not be certain, and felt the grip of the rad pistol. The mark of Unity pressed against the palm of my hand as I wrenched it loose of the holster, not knowing if it would even fire.

I clenched the trigger.

A focused burst of intense radiation struck the beast in its torso. The mortal shell it wore shuddered. It sagged, momentarily weakened. In that moment I swung the broad-blade with every ounce of my strength and cleaved through shoulder, through torso, through neck. It should have been dead, but instead it mewled and staggered, its plaintive wailing enough to set my teeth on edge.

Then I fell, unable to stand any longer and felt the depth of my failure.

‘For Unity,’ I spat, blood lacing my phlegm.

‘For Unity,’ said the Custodian, risen up behind it, his great golden blade splitting the beast’s head in two.

A second thrust of that perfect sword pierced where the heart should be, the beast now prostrate on the ground. A shriek tore from its mouth grille, a ghastly and inhuman sound. Tarry smoke issued from the joins in its armour like a guttering candle starved of air.

‘Is it dead?’ I asked, sunk to my knees and leaning heavily on the pommel of my sword.

The Custodian looked at me and I felt the weighing of judgement in his wary gaze. At length, he nodded.

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. You have my thanks…’

‘Heruk,’ I said, recognising the pause as an invitation, ‘Dahren Heruk.’

‘Thunder Legion?’

It was my turn to nod.

‘I thought your kind were all dead.’

‘We are. Near enough.’

‘Tagiomalchian. I am in your debt, Dahren Heruk. Terra is in your debt.’

‘Then I have one favour to ask of you,’ I said, raising my hand to stop Tagiomalchian from sheathing his sword.

He looked at me, that impassive mask as unreadable as a statue, but then I saw the slightest nod.

As the grip of mortality closed about me, I felt the dream. Smell and taste at first, but then I began to hear the cheers of victory as the Lightning Banner was lifted into the sky. I stood upon the slopes of Mount Ararat, Kabe and Gairok and Vezulah at my side.

Reality grew fleeting though I heard the soft clank of Tagiomalchian’s armour as he came to stand behind me, and the scrape of his blade as he brought it aloft.

‘Give me the honoured death,’ I said, and the cheers rose louder.

Unity! Unity! Unity!

I closed my eyes as tears of joy flowed down my face, and whispered.

‘For Unity…’

And heard the blade fall.

About the Author

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

A lone Astropath learns a secret that will tip the balance of the war. But are his guardians leading him to safety or damnation?

A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-853-2

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