Kallista Eris was a student of history, one whose field of expertise was the manner in which knowledge of the past was obtained and transmitted. Once, in the library aboard the Photep, she had shown Lemuel holo-picts of a crumbling text known as the Shiji, a record of the ancient emperors of a vanished culture of Terra. Kallista explained how its factual accuracy had to be questioned, given that its author’s intent appeared to be the vilification of the emperor previous to the one he now served. The veracity of any historical text, she explained, could only be interpreted by understanding the writer’s intent, style and bias.
“Lemuel, Camille,” said Kallista. “Do you have any water? I forgot to take extra.”
Lemuel chuckled. “Only you would forget to take enough water on a world like this.”
Kallista nodded, running a hand through her auburn hair, her skin reddening even beneath her sunburn. Her green eyes sparkled with amused embarrassment, and Lemuel saw why so many desired her. She had a vulnerability that made men alternately want to protect or deflower her. Strangely, she seemed oblivious to this fact.
Lemuel knelt beside his pack to retrieve a canteen, but Camille tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Save it, looks like we’re getting some brought to us.”
He turned and lifted a hand to shade his eyes, seeing one of the Astartes walking towards them with a bronze, oval-shaped vase held out before him. The warrior’s head was bare, apart from a trailing topknot of black hair, and his golden-skinned features were curiously flat, his eyes dark and hooded like a cobra’s. Despite the heat, Lemuel shivered, catching a flicker of cold power hazing the warrior’s outline.
“Sobek,” said Lemuel.
“You know him?” asked Camille.
“Of him. He’s one of the Scarab Occult, the Legion veterans. He’s also Captain Ahriman’s Practicus,” he said. Seeing Kallista’s look of incomprehension, he added. “I think it’s a rank of proficiency of some sort, like a gifted apprentice or something.”
“Ah.”
The Astartes warrior halted, towering over them like a solid slab of ceramite. His battle armour was gloriously intricate, the crimson plates engraved with geometric forms and sigils that Lemuel recognised as similar to those woven into his banyan. Sobek’s right shoulder-guard was stamped with a golden scarab, while the left bore the serpentine star icon of the Thousand Sons.
In the centre of the star was a black raven’s head, smaller than the scarab, yet subtly given more relevance thanks to its positioning within the Legion’s symbol. This was the symbol of the Corvidae, one of the cults of the Thousand Sons, though he had been able to glean precious little of is tenets during his time with the 28th Expedition.
“Lord Ahriman sends this hes of water,” said Sobek. His voice was sonorous and fulsome, as though produced in a deep well within his chest. Lemuel supposed the peculiar Astartes tone was due to the sheer volume of biological hardware within his body.
“That’s very gracious of him,” said Camille, holding her hands out to receive the hes.
“Lord Ahriman instructed me go give the water to Remembrancer Eris,” said Sobek.
Camille frowned and said, “Oh, right. Well, here she is.”
Kallista took the proffered hes with a grateful smile.
“Please send Lord Ahriman my thanks,” she said, placing the heavy vase on the ground. “It’s most considerate of him to think of me.”
“I shall pass your message to him when he returns,” said Sobek.
“Returns?” asked Lemuel. “Where’s he gone?”
Sobek glared down at him, and then marched back towards his encampment. The Astartes had not answered his question, but Lemuel caught an upward flicker of Sobek’s eyes towards the mountain.
“Friendly sort, isn’t he?” remarked Camille. “Makes you wonder why we bother, eh?”
“I know what you mean; none of them are exactly welcoming, are they?” said Lemuel.
“Some are,” pointed out Kallista, emptying water into her canteen, and managing to spill more than she transferred. “Ankhu Anen has helped us, hasn’t he? And Captain Ahriman is quite forthcoming in his remembrances. I’ve learned a lot from him about the Great Crusade.”
“Here, let me help you,” said Lemuel, kneeling beside her and holding the vase steady. Like most things designed for or by Astartes, it was oversized and heavy in mortal hands, more so now that it was filled with water.
“I’d be fascinated to read what you’ve accumulated so far,” he said.
“Of course, Lemuel,” said Kallista. She smiled at him, and he felt his soul shine.
“So where do you think Ahriman’s gone?” asked Camille.
“I think I know,” said Lemuel with a conspiratorial grin. “Want to go look?”
THE SEKHMET, THE Scarab Occult, Magnus’ Veterans, whichever name they bore, it was one of fierce pride and devotion. None of lower grade than a Philosophus, the last cult rank a warrior could hold before facing the Dominus Liminus, these veterans were the best and brightest of the Legion. Having transcended their likes and dislikes, defied their mortality and broken down their idea of self, these warriors fought from a place of perfect calm.
The Khan had called them automatons, Russ decried their fighting spirit and Ferrus Manus had likened them to robots. Having heard his primarch’s tales of the master of the Iron Hands, Ahriman suspected the latter comment was intended as a compliment.
Clad in hulking suits of burnished crimson Terminator armour, the Sekhmet crunched out over the salt plains and onto the lower slopes of the Mountain. Ahriman felt the presence of his Tutelary above him, sensing its unease as the psychic void beyond the deadstones loomed ever closer.
Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat marched alongside him, their strides sure and eager. The shimmering forms of Tutelaries darted thorough the air like wary shoals of fish in the presence of pack predators. Like Aaetpio, the Tutelaries of his fellow warriors and captains were fearful in the face of the Mountain’s emptiness.
To those without aether-sight, Tutelaries were invisible, but to the Thousand Sons with power they were bright visions of exquisite beauty. Aaetpio had served Ahriman faithfully for nearly a century, its form inconstant and beautiful, a vision of eyes and ever turning wheels of light. Utipa was a bullish entity of formless energy, as bellicose as Phosis T’kar, where Paeoc resembled an eagle fashioned from a million golden suns, as vain and proud as Hathor Maat.
Ahriman had thought them angels at first, but that was an old word, a word cast aside by those who studied the mysteries of the aether as too emotive, too loaded with connotations of the divine. Tutelaries were simply fragments of the Primordial Creator given form and function by those with the power to bend them to their will.
He linked his thoughts briefly with Aaetpio’s. If Magnus wasin trouble, then they would need to find out without the sight or aid of their Tutelaries.
Though he had seen nothing tangible in any of his divinations, Ahriman’s intuition told him something was amiss. As Magister Templi of all Prospero’s cults, Magnus taught that intuition was just as important a tool for sifting meaning from the currents of the Great Ocean as direct vision.
Ahriman suspected trouble, but Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat longed for it.
THE 28TH EXPEDITION had come to Aghoru three months ago. Its official designation in the War Council Records was Twenty-Eight Sixteen, though no one in the XV Legion ever called it that. Following the successful compliance of Twenty-Eight Fifteen, the sixty-three ships of the 28th Expedition translated from the Great Ocean to find a system of dead worlds, empty of life and desolate.