Jadrekk was the first of his followers to reach him.
‘Dark Apostle…’ he began, but shrank back at the sight of Elias’s wounds.
His arm was completely burned, all the way from his shoulder to his fingertips. The bones had fused, a crooked and malformed limb in place of what was there before.
‘My armour,’ snapped Elias, standing up unaided, snarling at any attempts at assistance. ‘Bring me my armour.’
Jadrekk obeyed and hurried off into the camp.
Elias didn’t notice. Instead, he glared at the spearhead still embedded in the rock. His gaze went from it to the legionaries, then his flock of cultists and finally the remaining citizens of Ranos.
‘Round them all up,’ he said to his warriors, burning with shame and fury. ‘I want them executed. No knives, no rituals, just kill them.’
Elias turned away, his ruined limb clutched close to his chest as the pronouncement was met first with stunned silence, then fear, as the mortals realised what they were fated for. Shouts and grunts for order competed with wailing protestation and begging.
Elias sneered at the sound. It disgusted him, as did the fact he would now have to go to Erebus and plead for his life.
‘And someone bring me that spear,’ he said, almost as an afterthought, before staggering back to his tent.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The face in the blood
When he blinked, a thin crust of dried blood parted and flaked away off his eyelid.
His back hurt from an hour spent lying in the cold and on this slab. Vaguely aware of remembered pain down his side, he reached over to explore the injury but found only reknit skin and bone.
‘Not again…’ groaned Grammaticus, and heaved himself up.
He was sitting on a makeshift operating table in some kind of infirmary. So they had moved him then. At least that boded well, he supposed. The lights were out, but a glow was coming through a portal window in the door from a much larger room beyond the infirmary. Despite the gloom, Grammaticus could see that there was blood everywhere. The reek of it was heady and unpleasant. In particular it spattered a grimy-looking side bar where a selection of rough tools and ripped bandages lay discarded. Not a surgeon’s work, then. He found no stitches, but he was still badly bruised despite his new sleeve of flesh.
Slau Dha, you wretched alien bastard…
A metal bowl close to hand, filled with his blood and draped with the half-cut leavings of the butcher’s bandages, caught Grammaticus’s attention. The liquid was perfectly still and unusually reflective. As it shimmered, he realised what was happening and fought the urge to kick over the bowl and upend its contents onto the floor. It wouldn’t help. If he didn’t flectthey would just find another way to make contact. It would go badly for him if he refused.
So instead he leaned over and waited for the face to appear.
He’d been expecting Gahet, as before, but instead the haughty yet severe features of the autarch started to resolve instead. For a fleeting moment, Grammaticus thought Slau Dha had somehow ‘heard’ his earlier remarks. But he was mistaken, as he also was about the identity of the face in the blood.
‘You are not Slau Dha,’ he said to the eldar regarding him from across time and space.
‘An astute observation, John Grammaticus.’
‘Humour? You surprise me. I didn’t think your kind possessed it.’
‘ My kind? Are you really so jaded, John Grammaticus?’
‘I am the herald of destruction for my entire race,’ answered Grammaticus. ‘Jaded doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
The eldar didn’t respond to his sarcasm. He was male, dark hair scraped back over his forehead to reveal an inked rune on the skin. Only his face and shoulders were visible and described in red monochrome, the rest lost beyond the edges of the bowl.
‘Seems you know my name,’ said Grammaticus. ‘What’s yours? Are you another agent of the Cabal?’
‘Your associationis how we have come to be in communion, John Grammaticus. And my name is unimportant.’
‘Not to me it isn’t. I like to know who my handlers are before they jerk my strings.’
The eldar pursed his lips. ‘Hmm. I detect some bitterness in your tone.’
‘How astute of you,’ Grammaticus mocked. ‘Now, what do you want?’
‘The question is, John, what do you want?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am not with the Cabal, and I know that you wish to extricate yourself from their “strings”, yes?’
Grammaticus didn’t answer.
‘Why are you here, John Grammaticus?’ the eldar went on. ‘What is your purpose?’
‘You seem knowledgeable, more so than me at least. Why don’t youtell me?’
‘Very well. You are seeking a fragment of power, weaponised in the form of a fulgurite spear. Your mission also concerns the primarch, Vulkan. I too am concerned with him as well as the matter of earth. I came to you because I need your help, and you are in a unique position to give it.’
‘And what makes you think I would be willing to exchange one puppeteer for another?’
‘You want to be released. I can give that to you, or at least show you how to release yourself. You are… long-lived, are you not?’
‘I suspect you already know the answer to that, too. Although, I think you’ve got me confused with a friend of mine. I would say I have had many lives rather than one that is especially long.’
‘Yes, of course. You perpetuals are all different, and not all human in the strictest sense either.’
‘You are referring to the Emperor?’
‘You met him once, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, briefly.’ Grammaticus did not know who this being was, but whatever his other claims, he was certainly powerful to be able to contact him in this way and knew a great deal of the greater stakes at play in the war. Long ago, during the Unification Wars when he had been part of the Caucasian Levies, Grammaticus had learned to be wary of those who possessed more knowledge than himself. When in such circumstances, he found it best to say little and listen intently.
The eldar went on. ‘Many years ago, wasn’t it? Several lifetimes, in fact.’
Grammaticus nodded.
‘No,’ said the eldar flatly. ‘I do not mean him, I refer to Vulkan. He also cannot die as such, but you already knew that, didn’t you? As you and I speak, he is in terrible danger. I need your help to save him, if you are willing?’
‘If I am willing?’ Grammaticus scoffed. ‘Do you even know why I am here, what I’ve been charged to do? So you are giving me a choice then, assuming I believe all I have been told?’
‘I am certain you know I speak with veracity, just as I am certain you will take up this cause.’
‘Then why ask, if it’s predetermined?’
‘Politeness, illusion of free will. Invent whatever rationale you choose, it does not matter.’
‘You say choice, but it still feels like manipulation. For argument’s sake though, tell me what you want me to do.’
‘Place your hands against the conduit,’ the eldar instructed.
Grammaticus was about to ask him what he meant by ‘the conduit’ when he guessed it was the bowl, so did as asked.
‘Now prepare yourself,’ said the eldar, not needing to be told that Grammaticus had done as requested.
‘Why?’
‘Because this will hurt.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dropsite
‘When the traitor’s hand strikes, it strikes with the strength of a Legion.’
– Warmaster Horus,
after the Isstvan V massacre
Isstvan V
Clouds roiled across the sky, presaging a storm to come. They were a mix of deep red and umber, turned that way by the planetary bombardment unleashed from warships at anchor in the upper atmosphere, and so thick they clung to the vessels ploughing through them at speed in billowing streamers.