The Path of Heaven Read online

  The battleship’s flanks had been as deeply changed as any other war vessel of the III Legion, and now swam with colour like spilled oil. Its hull was enormous – a Dictatus-class carcass, studded with silver-mawed weaponry, powered through the abyss by ancient engine-furnaces. The scars of a hundred campaigns still lingered on its gilt-edged flanks: Jhoviana, Apt var Aption, the Dalinite Nebula, Laeran, Murder, Isstvan III, Isstvan V. Once, those old plasma-burns and solid-round impacts would have been scoured from the adamantium plates post-action by whole armies of void drones; now they were left in place, picked out, made into decoration by gangs of indentured artisan-slaves – years of warfare recalled in a vast metal tapestry.

  Deep inside the Proudheart’s outer shell, the corridors echoed to new sounds. Frenzied cries came from the bowels of the ship endlessly, filtered and directed through transit shafts all the way to the exalted heights, every shriek resampled and reworked by banks of auditory processors until the walls shook from the overlapping layers of curated anguish. The mirrored panels of the interior were streaked with blood, left in place to turn darker, lit up by floating lamps of paper, wire and pearl. Nothing was erased, everything was savoured, all was illuminated.

  In its past, the Proudheart had been like other Imperial battleships. It had employed a day-night cycle based on the patterns of its Legion’s home world, bringing a rhythm of light and dark to the vastness of the city in space. Now the lumens were never doused, and the clamour of an eternal day was never stilled. Menials had their eyelids sewn shut and their ears excised to keep them from going insane amid the eternal brilliance of it all, though many still succumbed; those who did were replaced by vat-enhanced analogues, built from the embryo to withstand the cacophony, the flamboyance, the terror.

  Striding among that misshapen horde were the vestiges of the Emperor’s own – once the most unsullied of Legions, but which had flown closest to the sun. They had purged their ranks of waverers on the bloodied fields of Isstvan III and now numbered only the devoted among their number, the brothers who embraced the new path, who revelled in it, who strove for sensation with all the zealotry they had once reserved for martial exactitude.

  What they had lost in dignity, they had gained in pain-wracked power. Gifts came with mutilation, changes that once they would have shrunk from but which now made them conduits for a greater deadliness. Their armour had warped, cracking and blistering as the flesh and iron within twisted into new shapes. They toyed with their sacred gene architecture, willingly submitting to the knives of their Apothecaries, who in turn had become the most exalted of their number – a priest-caste of flesh-artisans commanding power over life, death and the various charted states between and beyond.

  For Von Kalda, one of that cadre in addition to being equerry to the Lord Commander Primus, the elevation had been a mixed blessing. He strode from the Proudheart’s under-bridge antechambers and up the winding glass-stone stairways. His fingers still glistened from the medicae-slabs, sticky under the inner film of his battle-gauntlets. The armour he wore bore the ivory sheen of his old order, though lined now with purple lacquer. His strangely childlike face remained creased in concentration as he went, locked in the one task – the sacred task – he had set himself while elbow-deep in the entrails of his subjects.

  And yet, when the Soul-Severed demanded attention, the summons could not be ignored. Von Kalda crested the stair’s summit and moved across a crystal courtyard overlooked by burnished images of dead-eyed serpents and eagles. Ahead of him, the gates to the lord commander’s sanctum slid open soundlessly.

  The chamber inside was cloaked in shifting shadows, lit by vein-blue lamps that hovered soundlessly on cushions of anti-grav. Metal bulkheads above creaked and flexed as if caught in a strong wind, though none stirred in that filtered atmosphere. The Proudheart was a home to more than mortal souls now, and in every crevice and fall-shaft the echoes of empyrical denizens hushed and slithered.

  The Soul-Severed, like all of them, had endured a long period of flux. He sat on a throne of fluid bronze that melded to his armour-clad bulk. The Lord Commander Primus had eschewed a gorget and helm, exposing the long scar on his neck that he seemed to take as a sign of strength. To be killed – by the primarch, no less – and then reconstituted by the command of the same executioner struck many in the Legion as a symbol of the new gifts they had won with so much labour. Eidolon was the first of the immortals, the first of those to show that death and life were mere facets of a deeper existence.

  At first he had been known as ‘the Risen’. That moniker had quickly begun to feel insufficient in its description of him.

  He gazed down from the throne with the dull-eyed, listless mien of the Chemosian aristocracy. Every look, every gesture, implied ownership, the kind of acquisitive superiority that brooked no argument or dissension. In what remained of the III Legion’s military hierarchy, that still counted for much, although there were many, Lucius perhaps foremost, who had treated it with a contempt that came from equal ambition.

  Von Kalda had no idea why Eidolon had been brought back. Perhaps it was a whim born of a newborn god’s boredom. Whatever the reason, the Lord Commander Primus had not remained long by Fulgrim’s side, and had taken nigh a third of the entire Legion’s strength under his own direction, giving no indication that he was following anyone’s orders but his own. Such was the way of things now – a galaxy of confused and overlapping loyalties, obfuscated by the clamour in the warp and the impossibility of long-range communications. They were all fighting in the murk, clawing their way towards Terra like blind men scattered by the wind.

  ‘Konenos makes contact,’ Eidolon said, gazing languidly at Von Kalda from his high seat. His voice was a rasp, still tight from where his throat had been cut.

  ‘What has he found?’ asked Von Kalda, bowing formally.

  ‘The Memnos convoy has attracted warp-wakes. It will be hit.’

  ‘He asks for ships?’

  ‘No.’ Eidolon’s irises had been replaced by iridescent jewels, and they glinted now with a tactician’s enthusiasm. ‘He reads it aright. This has the stink of barbarism.’

  As he spoke, a silver dream-font slid up from the marbled deck. Von Kalda stepped back, allowing a five-metre-wide column of bone and lattice-inlay to rise to its full height. The water’s surface began to ripple, and a faint hiss echoed around the throne-chamber.

  ‘Too long since we were given a chance to take him by the throat,’ Eidolon drawled, watching the water’s surface slide.

  The dream-font was a recent addition to his arsenal of arcane devices. Astropaths and daemon-bound psykers had been drowned in the machine, locking their visions into the water. Now it only reflected the dreams of the souls quenched within it, vomiting out their desperate nightmares when the waters boiled.

  ‘This thing cannot be trusted, lord,’ warned Von Kalda.

  ‘True. But what can?’

  Water spilled over the edges, frothing as the torrent cascaded through twists of bone. Reflective light angled up into the chamber’s heights, dancing like marsh-gas. The hissing grew in volume, joined by the dying echoes of old chokes.

  Soon enough, the images came. Von Kalda witnessed the ghostly orbs of worlds they had burned, the armies they had ground into the dust. Sigils snapped into focus briefly – the spidery motif of the forge world Ghorentes, the chevrons of the Knight House Praster, the endless imagery of Imperial Army regiments, now all destroyed. Cities drifted into view, planetary systems, deep-void installations, fleet-docks – all ruins, scoured down to ash by the remorseless advance of the Warmaster and his brothers.

  ‘Tell me, what do you feel when you see this?’ Eidolon asked. His withered, rust-edged voice made him sound more than half machine.

  ‘Only pride,’ said Von Kalda. ‘There will be more to burn before the end.’

  Eidolon looked down sourly. ‘And Terra is the crucible. Fabius has already
drawn up the experiments for it. I have seen them.’

  Von Kalda did not ask how Eidolon could have done so, nor what the Legion’s Apothecary-general had planned. For the time being, Fabius remained with the primarch, who was far off, silent and sundered by the wrath of the warp. Instead, Von Kalda, who had plans of his own, concentrated on the dream-font’s imagery, knowing that Eidolon placed faith in it even if he himself did not. So many bound souls of so many seers – it would tell them something, even if it did not deserve the name of anything like truth.

  ‘An infinite universe to twist,’ the Apothecary murmured, ‘and still we cleave to this goal? Terra, the Throneworld, and nothing else matters.’

  The shifting light of the dream-font played across Eidolon’s scarred, haughty face. ‘But that is all there is, my brother,’ he said. ‘We came from Terra, we return to Terra.’ Eidolon’s cheek twitched, exposing the tight skein of sinew that Fabius had painstakingly re-knitted. ‘And besides, we are changing. Our pleasures will soon be our masters. While we remember how to order a Legion, we must make the most of it.’

  The dream-font’s visions intensified. More planets swam up out of the aether, many wreathed in cold silver flames. Von Kalda saw the worlds they had most recently subdued for the Warmaster – Lermia, Erwa Nha, Goball, Herevail, Mhoreb X. The orbs traced a scattered line across the physical void, a necklace of embers strung out in a trail unto the spinward curve of the galaxy. The bulk of the fighting was in the galactic west now, the most extreme edge of Horus’ long warfront. Greater forces drove hard up the centre, grinding onwards under the leadership of the Warmaster himself.

  ‘The Memnos convoy,’ said Eidolon, his eyes narrowing. ‘Where does it supply?’

  ‘The Gheist Narrows. Materiel, troops, provisions. The Narrows are unsecured, only fallen for two months, Terran standard. If the supplies do not arrive–’

  ‘Then nothing of importance will be lost,’ said Eidolon. ‘The fodder-carriers will be hit, that will draw a response, and then the real target will be chosen. But what? Where do they wish us to weaken ourselves?’

  There were over a dozen garrison worlds within range, a hundred armed strongholds, twenty exposed battlefronts, all of which had their own strategic value.

  Von Kalda saw no pattern. A loosening of the hold on the Narrows could be countered and draw little strength from the surrounding regions. It could be a token move – the telltale of an enemy that was running out of resources.

  ‘Consider our enemy,’ said Eidolon. ‘Consider his strengths, his weaknesses.’

  ‘The Warhawk,’ said Von Kalda.

  ‘None other remains. What is his position?’

  ‘Dispersed. Strategos record nineteen strikes in three months, thirteen of which were repulsed. The tally of losses will be hurting them. He musters, surely now, for a final assault.’

  ‘That would be against four Legions, and he has not the numbers to take on more than one. If I were the Khan, I would be looking for a way out.’

  ‘But he will not run.’

  ‘He will have to. He wishes to see Terra before the end, just as we all do.’ Eidolon pressed his fingers together. Von Kalda could see the old mind was still active, undimmed by the physical changes that Fabius had wrought. ‘He knows the truth, even if you do not – this thing will be decided at the Palace, and he will not risk being cast adrift while we break the walls down. He needs to turn now, to get out of our pincer. See the void through his eyes, Apothecary. See what he sees.’

  Von Kalda returned to the dream-font. He saw the channels of the warp, the paths embedded in the stolen minds of drowned Navigators. He saw the distribution of the Warmaster’s forces, encircling, cutting off, stifling lines of retreat. Eidolon’s battalions had not been the only hunters trying to run down the White Scars – a thousand salients jutted into the void, smothering all ways through the turbulent aether. They all had standing orders – eliminate the threat of the flanks, clear the way to the Solar System and hasten the coming of the End.

  ‘Kalium,’ said Von Kalda at last. ‘He will attempt the Kalium Gate.’

  Eidolon raised a stitched eyebrow. ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘The Memnos convoy remains deep in conquered space. Its loss will draw forces from three sectors of the advance-lines. If he provokes them fully, that will weaken the Garmartes Sector, but he will not assault that region, for it is laid waste now and has no value for either him or us. He may, though, use the Garmartes margin to force passage under the galactic plane. The Kalium System can be taken if they move in numbers, placing the Gate in range, which remains clear of the aether-storm. If he can seize the subsector before a reply is made, he will have his passage home.’

  Eidolon nodded slowly. The dream-font seethed, as if in congratulation. ‘Good. And yet this is false hope, for the Gate cannot be forced – its foundations were broken by Perturabo and the storms now rage as wildly there as they do in every other sector.’ Eidolon drew in a long, wheezing breath, making the sutures along his throat flex. ‘But the Khan cannot know this. He makes the feint, and hopes to send us chasing after him into Memnos, freeing his path to Kalium.’

  The Lord Commander Primus rose from the throne and drew himself up to his full, crooked height. Eidolon’s movements had once been fluid, but were now those of an old man, made halting by the life-sustaining poisons that coursed through his ravaged frame. Only his voice still made him deadly – the swollen auditory augmetics and bloated throat-sacs that could unleash his flesh-ripping hurricanes of sound.

  Von Kalda looked up at him with a kind of fascinated loathing. He would have loved nothing more than to put his master under the knives, to delve into the scars left by resurrection and uncover the secrets that had created such a glorious monster. The vision he had already endured would be augmented by such a subject, though that was impossible. Perhaps one day, when the war was done and there would be leisure to do so… But for now he merely bowed in supplication.

  ‘Assemble the fleet and send word to Konenos,’ Eidolon ordered, limping down the throne-dais steps to the chamber’s floor. ‘Send a token force to aid the Suzerain, then order rendezvous with all other elements in the sensor-shadow of the Gate. We will make passage to Kalium as soon as our brothers join us.’

  ‘By your will.’ Von Kalda followed Eidolon down the polished processional. ‘And, if I may – the primarch?’

  Eidolon shot Von Kalda a dry smile. ‘If you can locate our beloved Father, then by all means inform him. Pinning the Khan down might drag him from his indulgences, though I doubt it.’ He limped on, clearly still wracked by the pain of his transformation. ‘There will come a day when we are not bound by the wills of those child-gods. For now, we must do as we have learned to – prosecute their wars, pretend we are the masters of our own fate.’

  His gold-edged boots scraped against the marble as his feet dragged.

  ‘But what dark jests this universe plays on us all,’ Eidolon rasped. ‘And what fools it chooses to tell them.’

  On the bulk carrier Terce Falion, lead vessel of the III Legion’s deep-void Memnos convoy, Shipmaster Eleanora Kulba pushed her way up to the observation bridge. A lifter-servitor blundered out of her path, snorting stupidly through iron mandible-guards. She reached the doors and thumped the access panel. The electronics clicked twice before the pistons finally released and the rust-pocked metal shunted open.

  Fael Alobus, her second in command, was waiting for her on the far side, as was the sable-robed Navigator Cavelli. Beyond them, the low curved roof of the Terce Falion’s bridge extended down towards rows of armourglass viewports.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, crisply. ‘With me.’

  The three of them proceeded down the main gantry. A thin line of pressed metal hanging over pits crawling with indentured bridge crew. The space stank of corrosion, human sweat and machine lubricant. Ahead, the void peered down at them through the l
ead lining of real-viewers.

  Kulba hated the sight of it. She spent most of her time lodged down in the inner cortex-hull of the bulk carrier, avoiding staring out into the infinity of nothingness that it was her curse to ply. She had never wanted to sail the void, but as the Great Crusade had sucked resources from every world in the burgeoning Imperium and stripped planets dry of those with any degree of capability or nous, eventually the summons had come her way and the agents of the Administratum had made it clear to her where her destiny lay.

  To make it worse, she had discovered that she was good at it. Piloting a bulk carrier was a peculiar skill, a cross between spire administration and freebooting. She was tough, she had a healthy covering of fat, she was perpetually angry – all qualities that had served her well in the auxiliary fleets of the Imperial Army in its spread across the stars.

  The old Army and its command structures were now gone, of course. Kulba’s loyalty, for what it was worth, was to the Memnos Combine, which had long been in fealty to the sectoral command at Loeb, which had once been under the authority of the Terran prefecture of Phoedes but for two standard years now had been subsumed into the growing hinterland of tribute worlds harvested by the III Legion. Through them, she supposed, her fealty now belonged to the supreme authority of the Warmaster, but in truth it made little difference where the orders came from. She made a living, the food-cylinders kept coming, the ships were repaired and kept in order. There was danger, but there always had been. Her masters had always been distant, her goals obscure. She did what she did, the days passed and other minds plotted the greater progress of the Imperial dream.

  The void remained hateful, though. Nothing would ever change that.

  ‘Signals, you say,’ Kulba said, pulling a data-slate from her grease-spotted tunic.

  ‘Not from us,’ said Alobus, scratching one of his chins. ‘Second-hand, out of the fleet.’

  ‘Who in the fleet?’

  ‘The Suzerain. A Legion ship.’