I nodded, seeing no point in hiding the fact I saw the undying effigy of Ferrus Manus.
‘I thought so,’ said Curze, unable to shake his melancholy. ‘Our father gave you eternal life. Do you know what he gave me? Nightmares.’ His mood darkened further, his face transformed into genuine anguish. For a moment I caught a glimpse of my brother’s true self and despite all that he had done or claimed to have done, I pitied him.
‘I am plagued by them, Vulkan.’ Curze was no longer looking at me. He regarded his reflection in the obsidian instead. It appeared to be something he had done before, and I imagined him then, screaming in the darkness with no one to hear his terror.
The Lord of Fear was afraid. It was an irony I thought Fulgrim would appreciate, twisted as he was.
‘How can I escape the dark if the dark is part of what I am?’
‘Konrad,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you see.’
‘I am Night Haunter. The death that haunts the darkness…’ he answered, though his voice and mind were far away. ‘Konrad Curze is dead.’
‘He stands before me,’ I pressed. ‘What do you see?’
‘Darkness. Unending and eternal. It’s all for nothing, brother. Everything we do, everything that has been done or will be done… It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I fear. I amfear. What kind of a knife-edge is that to balance on, I ask?’
‘You have a choice,’ I said, hoping that some fraternal bond, some vestige of reason still existed in my brother. It would be buried deep, but I could unearth it.
He turned his gaze upon me – so lost, so bereft of hope. Curze was a mangy hound that had been kicked too many times.
‘Don’t you see, Vulkan? There are no choices. It is determined for us, my fate and yours. So I make the only choice I can. Anarchy and terror.’
I saw it then, what had broken inside my brother. His tactics, his erratic moods, were all caused by this flaw. It had led him to destroy his home world.
Dorn had seen the madness lurking within him. I suppose I had known it was there too, back on Kharaatan.
‘Let me help you, Konrad…’ I began.
Pale like alabaster, eyes dark like chips of jet with about as much warmth, Curze’s face changed. As the thin, viper’s smile crawled over his lips, I knew that I had lost him and my chance of appealing to what little humanity still remained.
‘You would like that, I think. A chance to prove your nobility. Vulkan, champion of the common man, most grounded of us all. But you’re not on the ground, are you brother? You are far from your beloved earth. Is it colder, here with me in the dark?’ he asked, bitterly. ‘You are no better than me, Vulkan. You’re a killer just the same. Remember Kharaatan?’ he goaded.
I remembered, and lowered my head at the memory of what I had done, what I nearlydid.
‘You weren’t yourself, brother,’ hissed Ferrus, his graveyard breath whistling through skeletal cheeks. ‘You had a backbone.’
Curze seemed not to notice.
‘Our father’s gifts are wasted on you,’ he said. ‘Eternal life, and what would you do with it? Till a field, raise a crop, build a forge to make ploughshares and hoes. Vulkan the farmer! You sicken me! Guilliman is dull, but at least he has ambition. At least he had an empire.’
‘ Had?’
‘Oh,’ Curze smiled, ‘you don’t know, do you?’
‘What has happened to Ultramar?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll never see it.’
I suddenly feared for Roboute and all my loyal brothers that fell beneath Curze’s notice. If he had done this to me, then what could he have done to the rest of them?
‘Nemetor…’ I said, as parts of my most recent ordeal came back to me, including the appearance of a son I had thought dead. ‘Was he…?’
‘Real?’ Curze suggested, grinning.
‘Did you kill him?’ I pressed.
‘You’re dying to know aren’t you, brother?’ He held up his hand. ‘Sorry, poor choice of words. You’ll see him again, before the end.’
‘So, this willend then?’
‘One way or another, Vulkan. Yes, I sincerely hope it will end.’
He left me then, backing off into the shadows. I watched him all the way to the cell door. As it was opened, I saw the slightest shaft of light and wondered how deep my prison went. I also half caught a hurried conversation and got the sense of a commotion outside. Though I didn’t hear his muttered words, Curze seemed irritated in his curt responses. Booted footsteps moved quickly, hammering the deck, before they were cut off by the cell door shutting.
Lumen-globes burning in the alcoves in the flanking walls died, darkness returned and with it the faint, mocking laughter of my dead brother.
‘Shut up, Ferrus,’ I said.
But it only made him laugh louder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Egress
The north-facing aspect of the manufactorum was a broken ruin. Outside, the dead and injured littered the streets.
Narek had lost eight legionaries in the frontal assault, not including Amaresh, who had been cut down by their sniper. Despite the losses, he appreciated the symmetry of that, one hunter pitched against the other. He decided that he would have a reckoning with this warrior – see how sharp his own edge was and if, despite his grievous injuries, he could still consider himself worthy. It was an honourable contest, not like the bloodbath he had left behind.
Distasteful and profligate as it was, it was also necessary. Discovered in the midst of stealthing to their gate, Narek had no other choice but to push down the throat of the loyalists, knowing full well that they had a track-mounted cannon and a defensible position. Admittedly, he hadn’t predicted they would open fire straight away – the bulk of his troops were still vaulting barricades and running stooped-over to the next scrap of cover when the world lit up in actinic blue – but it had served its intended purpose. Dagon, Narlech and Infrik had circled around the rear egress. That left Melach, Saarsk, Vogel and himself skirting the flanks; two on the right, two on the left.
Head down, hugging the edge of the street as the gun battle to the front of the manufactorum raged, Narek hissed down the vox to his elite, ‘Close the trap, find the human and bring him to me alive.’
‘ And the rest?’ Narlech voxed back.
Narek could already hear the bloodlust in his voice. ‘Kill anyone that gets in your way. I don’t want prisoners, give me corpses.’ He cut the feed.
Nearby he could hear that his enemies had broken out of the back of the building.
‘How did they find us?’ Leodrakk had to shout to be heard, bolt shells and chips of rockcrete from the manufactorum’s slowly disintegrating structure raining all around them.
Numeon shook his head. ‘Could’ve been the pyre smoke or we may have been under watch already.’
‘But why come at us like this, straight at us?’
‘Pergellen forced their hand.’
‘Doesn’t make sense. They would have hunkered down, circled us and called in reinforcements.’
Numeon paused, eyeing the gloom beyond the walls. Behind him, he heard Domadus shouting orders between the percussive reports of his heavy bolter. As soon as word came from Pergellen that the XVII had found them, all legionaries inside the manufactorum had formed up into a firing line. Only Numeon, Leodrakk and two in raven’s black moved through the back of the building to the manufactorum’s rear exit. It was no fortress, and they couldn’t stay here, but what Leodrakk was saying made sense. Why not lay siege and wait until they could storm the barricades in force?
‘It’s a distraction,’ he decided. ‘Keeping our attention front.’
The rear exit to the manufactorum was a depot strewn with the half-blasted carcasses of freight-haulers. Lots of cover, lots of places to hide.
‘You see that?’ said Numeon, crouching down by the rear door and gesturing outside.