He roared, putting his anger into a two-handed swing that Vulkan stepped aside before cutting horizontally with his sword and slicing clean through the Deathshroud’s waist. Coughing blood against the interior of his half-crushed helm, the dying legionary reached for a canister mag-locked to his belt. It was another of the dirty bombs that he had unleashed on Nemetor and his company. Vulkan crushed the Deathshroud’s fingers under his boot. Sheathing his sword, the primarch wrenched the power scythe from the legionary’s grasp and snapped it over his knee in a flurry of agitated sparks.
It was enough to break the spirit of the Death Guard, who were now engaged by assaulting Firedrakes and fell back in good order. The Pyre Guard were putting the others to the blade when Numeon leaned down to rip off the Deathshroud’s helmet.
A pallid-skinned, mashed-up face greeted him. To Numeon’s surprise the warrior did not spit or curse – he grinned, exposing a raft of broken teeth. Then he began to laugh.
‘You’re all dead men,’ he whispered.
‘Not before you,’ replied Numeon, and ended him.
He looked up again when he heard screaming. Not from the dying, but savage and guttural war cries. A ruddy smog was sweeping across the battlefield, fashioned from blood-drenched mist and the smoke generated by thousands of fires. Caught in a crosswind, it slashed in from the east and brought with it the brutal challenge of a Legion that revelled in war. It was air to them, sustenance.
World Eaters.
Their brownish-red silhouettes materialised in the smog like phantoms, along with something else.
Something big.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Immortal
‘You have a fine mind, John. We should talk, and consider the options available to beings like us.’
– The Emperor, the Triumph at Pash
When he heard the screaming, Numeon drew his weapon.
It was coming from the infirmary, a gut-wrenching cry of agony that shook the legionary from a dark reverie. He’d heard screaming like that before, on a plain of black sand. And it chilled him, the symmetry he found in the remembrance of one held against the reality of the other.
The cry of agony ceased almost as soon as it began. A noxious stench permeated the air – whether from whatever had just happened in the infirmary or a false sensory remnant from his bleak imaginings, it was hard to be sure. Numeon didn’t move. He kept his eyes on the infirmary door, glaive levelled at waist height with the volkite primed.
Behind him, the dying embers of the pyre crackled into extinction. He paid them no heed, his attention fixed. Others arrived onto the manufactorum floor, drawn by the scream. Numeon kept them back with a warning hand gesture, before nodding in the direction of the infirmary.
‘What was that?’ he heard Leodrakk hiss, and caught the sound of the Pyre Guard’s bolter slide being racked.
‘Came from in there,’ murmured Numeon, maintaining his aggressive posture. ‘Who’s here, besides Leo?’ he asked. He had taken off his battle-helm; it was sitting by the side of the pyre dappled with soot. Without it, he had no visibility of his comrades’ positions relative to his own.
‘Domadus,’ uttered the Iron Hand.
‘K’gosi,’ said the Salamander, just above the quiet rumble of his flame-igniter.
‘Shen?’ asked Numeon, aware of fourlegionaries in total, and swearing he could make out the growling undertone of the Tech-marine’s cybernetics.
‘He was dead,’ said Shen’ra, announcing his presence with his answer. ‘No man could survive those wounds. No man.’
‘Then how?’ said Leodrakk.
‘Because he isn’t a man at all,’ muttered K’gosi, raising his flame gauntlet.
‘Hold,’ Numeon told them all. ‘Approach no closer. Out here, at a distance, we have the advantage over whatever is in that room. Domadus,’ he added, ‘get Hriak. No one else enters. Leodrakk, guard the door.’
Both legionaries did as ordered, leaving Numeon to maintain watch.
‘We wait for the Librarian, find out what we’re dealing with.’
‘And then, brother-captain?’ asked K’gosi.
‘Then,’ Numeon replied, ‘we kill it, if we have to.’
All of them had heard rumours. War stories. Every soldier had them. They were an oral tradition, a comradely means of passing on knowledge and experience. What lent these tales credence was that veteran officers of the Legiones Astartes had attested to factsand given them, in detail, in their reports. To falsify an account of a battle or mission-action was no minor infraction in either Legion or Army. All military bodies took such things incredibly seriously. But facts, explainable through scientific means or not, could not accurately and convincingly reference ‘abominations’ or even ‘physical possession’ without coming across as suspect. These were the words of vaunted, trusted men. Captains, battalion commanders, even Chapter Masters. Such testimony should have guaranteed veracity and credence.
And yet…
Creatures of Old Night and evil sorcery had been confined to myth. It was written, in ancient books, that they could reshape men and assume their forms. Towards the end of the Great Crusade, evidence that was concealed at the time – but later brought to light – gave claim that such creatures could even turn a legionary’s humours against his brothers.
In Numeon’s darkest nightmares, the name Samusresonated with eerie familiarity. Here, on Ranos, it had visited him more frequently. It had been the same on Viralis. They were not xenos, and he had seen and exterminated enough aliens to know this was the truth. Numeon knew an old word for them, one that if spoken a few years ago would have earned derision, but that now carried a ring of bitter and forbidding truth.
And, if further rumours were to be believed, the patronage of such beings was sought out and courted by the Word Bearers. They had found a different faith, the followers of Lorgar. In his gut, Numeon knew that was why they were here. He feltit.
‘Something comes!’ hissed K’gosi.
The Salamanders aimed weapons as a man-shaped figure staggered through the infirmary to reach the door to the manufactorum. It was dark inside and only a silhouette was visible through the window.
‘If it is allowed to speak, it might be the end of us,’ said Shen’ra.
‘Agreed,’ said K’gosi.
‘Wait…’ said Numeon. For despite those misgivings and the threat of something unknown gnawing at the resolve of every legionary in this war, this felt different.
With a low creak, the door opened and the man they knew as John Grammaticus stepped through its open frame. His hands were raised, and when he was no more than a metre beyond the doorway he stopped.
‘Who are you?’ Numeon demanded in a belligerent tone.
‘John Grammaticus, as I told you.’ He seemed calm, almost resigned, despite the fact he faced off against four battle-ready Space Marines.
‘You could not have lived,’ Shen’ra accused. ‘Your wounds… I saw you die on that slab in there. You could not have lived.’
‘And yet, here I am.’
‘Precisely our problem, Grammaticus,’ Numeon told him. ‘You live when you should be dead.’
‘I am not the only one.’
The slightest pause betrayed Numeon’s doubt before he answered. ‘Speak plainly,’ he warned. ‘No more games.’
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you,’ Grammaticus confessed.
‘We should kill him now,’ said K’gosi.
Grammaticus sighed. ‘It would do no good. It never does. May I put my arms down yet?’
‘No,’ said Numeon. ‘You may talk. If I deem what I hear to be the truth, you may put your arms down. If not, we’ll bring you down a different way. Now, how is it you are still alive?’
‘I am perpetual. That is to say, immortal. Your primarch is, too.’
Numeon frowned. ‘What?’