Death was all that mattered to Magneric.
Let Baldon wheedle at him to rest, let Ralstan admonish him for his lack of maintenance slumber. He would sleep when the stain of Kalkator’s existence was wiped from the galaxy.
‘Onwards, brothers, in the name of the Emperor! Strike down these animals and carve a path towards those who betrayed the Lord of Terra. Feel His holy wrath. Kill the ork that we might strike down the traitors! Wash the sands of this dead world with their blood, and then let us away, and conquer, conquer, conquer in the Emperor’s name!’
Magneric surged on, batting orks from his path, until the rabble thinned and gave out. The crowd was behind him. He shot down the last few orks between him and the dune, gyros shifting within his body to compensate for the slip of the sand. He came over the crest, and looked down at the Iron Warriors’ last desperate redoubt.
It had been a building of unguessable height. The top part had been sheared away in the cataclysm that had destroyed the world, leaving sprouts of tangled rebar jutting from crumbling nubs of rockcrete. Three floors alone remained, set in a slight hollow scoured out by the actions of the wind blasting around the building, the bottommost level half-buried in the sand. The ruin had few windows, and one door. Perhaps that lack of apertures was why it had stood a thousand years in the face of howling winds while others around it had been worn down to angular patterns in the sand. The sole entrance was on the side facing Magneric, choked to the top with windblown dust. He rumbled with satisfaction. The traitors’ last Thunderhawk had come down hard a quarter of a kilometre away, ploughing up shattered concrete from the barren fields of the desert. The wreck smoked still. The Iron Warriors were going nowhere.
The glint of steel in the ruddy sunlight revealed Iron Warriors manning the building. A ring of dead orks three deep surrounded it, staining the dust black with their blood. None had come within twenty metres of the position and lived. The building was angled, knocked to one side by seismic upheaval, its rockcrete scoured rough by the dead world’s unforgiving weather. Cracks spidered it on all sides. As battered as Kalkator’s Great Company, it was nevertheless a serviceable fortress, and the Iron Warriors were far from beaten.
Magneric paused, revelling in the moment before he would crush his foe. Behind him the howl of the orks quietened, and the hard clatter of weapons fire abated. His sergeants, Chaplain and castellan all voxed him reporting the same thing from all fronts: the orks were withdrawing.
Laughing in triumph, Magneric stamped forward, sending crescents of sand skidding out in front of him, to stand at the edge of the killing field.
‘Kalkator!’ he boomed. ‘Kalkator! Come out, come out! You are caught! The orks retreat, and you face only me and my judgement. You are run to earth. Come out from your den and face me not as an animal, but as the noble warrior you once were. Ask for mercy, repent your sins against the Emperor and I shall absolve you of your transgressions with a swift death!’
Silence. Magneric’s vox clicked.
‘My lord,’ said Ralstan. ‘The orks have scattered, but I have reports from Ericus that there are many, many more inbound. The Obsidian Sky has been unable to engage with the Palimodes and is beset on all sides. Further ork craft are approaching. Be quick with this. We must leave!’
A noise of dissatisfaction rumbled from Magneric’s vox-emitter. ‘Kalkator! Answer me!’
This time a voice sounded from the building in reply. ‘Magneric! So high must I be in your regard, that you chase me for a thousand years and more, into the teeth of the greatest ork Waaagh! since Ullanor!’
‘Kalkator!’ boomed the Dreadnought. His pneumatics hissed, and the great block of his right shoulder shifted, lifting his assault cannon high. The barrels spun once, and halted. Magneric’s targeting array danced over the ruin, picking out the Iron Warriors in green outlines. Kalkator was not among them.
‘You are looking well. Iron without suits you.’
‘I am unmoved by your mockery,’ boomed Magneric. ‘Come out so that I might kill you!’
Other Black Templars gathered on the dune, kneeling down to take cover behind its ridge. Ralstan directed some of his warriors to fan out to the left and right to surround the building. They were respectfully silent. Kalkator and Magneric were veterans of the Heresy war. To hear them speak was to hear echoes of that awful conflict.
‘I ask for parley!’ shouted Kalkator.
‘You shall have none!’ roared Magneric. ‘I bring only the mercy of death, not a desire to speak.’
‘Then let me rephrase my offer,’ said Kalkator. ‘Three lascannons are pointed at your sarcophagus. If you refuse parley, or if you accept it and attempt to kill me, then I will have them open fire and burn whatever sorry scrap of flesh still exists within that machine.’
Silence fell. Evening was coming. The sinking sun, invisible behind its shroud of dust, pushed Magneric’s shadow out so that it fell upon Kalkator’s redoubt, grey and inflated in the scattered light.
‘Our auspexes detect a massive concentration of orks coming towards our position,’ said Kalkator. ‘Thousands. You are merely seventy-three warriors. You cannot hold them. I am quite content to sit here and watch them butcher you. But there is another way.’
‘My lord, he is correct,’ said Castellan Ralstan. ‘As Ericus informed us, orks are landing in number to the west. What are your orders?’
‘Do you hear them coming?’ goaded Kalkator.
‘My lord!’ said Ralstan.
Magneric roared. ‘Very well! Parley!’
‘Swear upon your honour you will not harm me,’ said Kalkator.
‘My acceptance of your truce is my bond! An oath is not required,’ bellowed Magneric indignantly.
‘Nevertheless, say it,’ said Kalkator.
‘You have my word,’ said Magneric proudly.
Kalkator emerged on the roof of the building, standing up from whatever hiding place he had been skulking in. ‘Then let us talk,’ he said.
For the first time in centuries, Kalkator stood facing Magneric. Caesax and his vexillary flanked the warsmith, the banner of his Great Company rippling in the cooling wind. Magneric’s Sword Brethren made a shallow arc about him, Ralstan at his side. Hatred glared out from eye-lenses set in black and iron-grey armour.
After a moment’s thought, Kalkator reached up and unsealed his helm. He lifted it from his head, and looked upon the Dreadnought with unmoderated eyes.
‘It is good to see you, Magneric.’
Magneric’s sole glass eye stared unblinkingly back. Upon his sensorium feed, reticules locked onto Kalkator’s vulnerable points glowed red and screamed that he should destroy the traitor.
‘Do not seek to play upon old affections!’ he snarled, his vox-emitters expressing his sentiment as an inhuman machine growl.
‘We found ourselves on opposite sides of the war,’ said Kalkator. ‘I do not see why that should invalidate our friendship.’
‘You turned on everything we fought for! You betrayed the Imperium, and cast your lot in with the Dark Powers of the universe. You have ruined mankind.’
Kalkator’s lip curved. ‘We did betray the Emperor, if such you can call abandoning the service of a liar who concealed the truth of reality from those who loved Him, who used our Legion carelessly. You might call it betrayal, freeing mankind from the fetters of oppression, allowing the strong to prevail, showing our kind the real meaning of a power that is accessible to all, not just those self-appointed guardians who hide their purposes behind untruths and oppression.’