The Path of Heaven Read online

  ‘This man, Achelieux, is but a mortal,’ said Qin Fai, Ganzorig’s counterpart in the Legion command. ‘He may live yet, he may be dead. He may aid us, it may be beyond his power. These are weak strands to clutch at.’

  ‘They are,’ said Ilya, pushing herself to her feet. She did not like addressing the ordu in their own place, and she spoke in Gothic, not trusting her Khorchin to convey her thoughts aright. ‘Weak strands indeed. It would shame me to bring them to you. If there were any other chances we had not tried, I would agree with your words, and with Tachseer’s, and with any other counsel that said “Enough, we have run and we have hunted, but there is no path left”…’

  The khans listened in silence. Ilya could feel their massed eyes on her – quiet, respectful, sceptical. They had always listened to her, right from the very start. That burden had been a heavy one, and the weight of it had never lessened.

  ‘But you did not know this man,’ she went on. ‘A Novator of the Houses Magisterial is a great lord, and Achelieux was amongst the greatest of them. He had the ear of the Palace itself, and I saw his warpcraft enacted during the Crusade, when he brought fleets to war through storms of such magnitude they said the task was impossible. Be in no doubt: he is a magister of the aether, a true guide. ’

  ‘And yet, if he could find the path to Terra,’ said Shiban, also in Gothic, ‘would he not have taken it?’

  ‘I believe he remained in the void.’

  ‘Because he could not do otherwise.’

  ‘Because his duties kept him there.’

  ‘You cannot know that.’

  Ilya felt her anger rising. Shiban’s tone had become sardonic. ‘No, Tachseer, I cannot. There is much that is guesswork – I have never hidden that.’

  ‘Yet whatever the truth,’ interjected Arvida, reverting to his fluent Khorchin, ‘we know where he is now. I have seen it.’

  ‘And we can gain this location,’ added Yesugei. ‘The ways are charted, and the journey is short. Perhaps that is fate. Or maybe good fortune – the first we have for a while.’

  ‘Then you support this, zadyin arga?’ asked Ganzorig. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Because when has szu-Ilya ever led us wrong, noyan-khan?’ said Yesugei, smiling. ‘And because we swore to gain Terra after Prospero, and to break an oath is a sacred crime, punishable by the gods themselves. And because it is the way of danger, and discovery, and, as for myself, I am not yet done living, and wish to frustrate the enemy a little longer.’

  That brought answering smiles from the assembled khans.

  ‘But it is not my order to make,’ said Yesugei, bowing to the primarch.

  All eyes turned back to Jaghatai. He had remained silent throughout the exchange, listening intently, his deep-set eyes giving nothing away. Ilya held her breath.

  ‘You answered the call,’ Jaghatai said, addressing them all again. ‘You were faithful, even when treachery knocked on our doors from within. I know the cost already borne, and until this moment, in truth, I was not fully of one mind, for I yearn for nothing more than to finish what was started on Prospero. I am hunted by my brothers, and my blood runs hot from the shame of it, and my wish is only to turn and face them. Yet this is the easier choice – to become as they are, and to counter rage with rage, and fight blind, knowing that the greater cause will be lost.’

  Ilya sank back against her seat. Once again, the trust was there, though it felt to her, and had always felt, that she had done so little to earn it.

  ‘Distrust the path of ease,’ Jaghatai said. ‘That is what we have been taught, is it not? So I give the command – if we are to die, then Catullus will serve. Return to your ships, make ready for the warp. Our hunters are tight on our scent, so I wish us gone swiftly. You have five hours.’

  The Khagan looked at Ilya and inclined his head in what might have been acknowledgement.

  ‘We will do what the sage counsels,’ he said. ‘One last throw of the dice.’

  Two hours before the Swordstorm’s engines were primed to fire, the first signal came in. An outrider on the edge of the system picked up the dim fore-blip of an incoming ship, and initiated a deep-scour sensor-sweep. Significant ships were yet to join the muster, among them the Melak Karta, so all checks were thorough.

  The gun-corvette Xia Xia received the signal and burned hard to close the distance, aiming to get a clearer augur-reading. Its crew managed to clarify the signal, but did not recognise the ident. They ran the scan again, cross-checked it, then upgraded the alert to a fleet-wide priority signal.

  ‘Fourteenth Legion,’ came the comm-burst, sent to every ship in the outer perimeter. ‘Repeat, Fourteenth Legion signal incoming.’

  At that stage, the Kaljian had taken position closest to the likeliest incursion points. Returning in poorly hidden anger from kurultai, Shiban had ordered the attack frigate away from the main cluster of battleships, pulling high above of the lumbering void-monsters still undergoing preparations for warp jump in Aerelion’s shadow.

  ‘Can you be sure?’ Shiban asked, moments after returning to the bridge to assume full command. The scarred flesh of his exposed face shone from exertion in the practice cages.

  ‘No doubt,’ answered Tamaz, the sensorium master.

  Jochi was there too, as was Yiman, promoted to darga since Memnos, and many others of the brotherhood. All were armoured, their weapons powered.

  ‘Launch intercept,’ ordered Shiban, taking his seat in the throne. ‘Full speed.’

  Already primed, the frigate powered up to attack velocity, shooting clear of the other vessels in the local void-volume. By then the alert was still filtering through to the body of the main fleet, putting the Kaljian ahead of the pack.

  Jochi moved up to Shiban’s shoulder. ‘My khan,’ he said, warily.

  Shiban looked straight ahead. ‘Do not counsel caution, brother,’ he said. ‘The others will be with us in moments.’ He felt the drum of the engines vibrating up through the decking. ‘We can at least claim the first kill. These things have not yet been taken away.’

  The Kaljian overhauled the Xia Xia and assumed point ahead of the other ships spreading out to intercept the rogue signal. Within moments, the first inbound vessel was detectable on the forward augurs.

  ‘Arm main lance,’ ordered Shiban. ‘How many craft have emerged?’

  Tamaz did not reply straight away. ‘One, my khan.’

  Shiban laughed. ‘A brave one. He has broken formation.’

  Tamaz looked up at him. ‘No, my lord. Just one. No other signals. And we are being hailed.’

  The rogue ship’s details began to spill down the sensor-lenses, and immediately the oddness became clear – a system-runner, not a warship, barely capable of making warp jumps at all.

  ‘Shall I relay the hail?’ asked Tamaz.

  The Kaljian’s lance remained trained on the incoming ship, now almost close enough to spy on the real-viewers. Almost without realising, Shiban ran through the pre-fire routine himself, visualising the flash of light as the forward lance fired. A ship like that would have no chance – a clean hit would implode it instantly.

  ‘My khan?’

  Shiban snapped back. ‘Maintain course,’ he said. ‘Train macrocannons, engine-shots. Relay the hail to me.’

  The audio, when it filtered through his helm systems, was thick with white noise. Even so, the signal was just clear enough, and from the first word Shiban felt a sudden, cold wash of familiarity.

  ‘Torghun Khan, five others, sagyar mazan kill-squad, responding to Legion muster as ordered. Awaiting command.’

  The voice hadn’t changed much. Perhaps the Khorchin was a little better than it had been – a more Chogorian inflection. At least he had adopted the custom of the Legion now, and there was no more talk of ‘companies’. The old Brotherhood of the Moon had been disbanded, its warriors assessed for loyalty before bein
g dispersed under the guidance of other khans, so by rights he should not even have used the honorific.

  By rights, he should have died. That had been the justice of it.

  The two ships continued to hurtle towards one another, and the system-runner became a visible white dot in the far distance. Other vessels of the fleet came into range behind the Kaljian, their weapons primed. At such a distance they might not have picked up the hail yet – a single shot would still end the situation.

  ‘Khan, what are your orders?’ asked Jochi.

  One shot, from the Kaljian or from any other ship, that would do it. There could be no blame attached, and little enough loss.

  ‘Khan?’

  Shiban broke from the vision, and rose from the throne. ‘Transmit stand-down notice to all following ships,’ he said, striding over to where his guan dao had been hung. ‘Select ten from the minghan, full-armour, battle-ready.’

  He activated his blade’s energy field, and it sparked into life as eagerly as it had once done on the bone-white plains of Chondax.

  ‘Order the ship to come to full stop, shields down,’ he commanded, his eyes locked on the steadily growing blob of light ahead. ‘Say nothing, give them nothing. We are going over.’

  Torghun watched the incoming ships. Merely laying eyes on them again was enough to make his pulse quicken. The ivory prows of the fleet had never been a source of pride, not even at the start, and now they also brought with them the heady nausea of shame.

  Even after all had been made plain – that the Legion was re-forming for one final engagement and that all blades were needed in the defence of the ordu – the decision to respond to the summons had been hard to make. Sanyasa had been in favour, as had Ozad, Ahm, Gerg and Inchig. Holian had been the only other one to hold back. The two of them had resisted, and a khan’s word had the greatest weight, but there were no certainties, not among those whose only purpose was to die in battle and who had been flung far from the heart of the Legion’s ranks and honour-codes.

  The possibility of deception had been raised. Perhaps, Holian had argued, the order was a ruse, elaborately disguised and used by the enemy to flush them out into the open. To die in open combat was honourable, but to be lured into a slaughter was pointless.

  In truth, though, Torghun had never believed that – the codes were in order, the seals and counter-sigils perfectly aligned. The things that had prevented him from responding immediately were human things, mortal emotions that might have been purged a lifetime ago in another soul – pride, resentment, the burning guilt of failure, of a step wrongly taken.

  So now he stood on the rusting bridge of his stolen ship, watching those whom he had once betrayed swarm out to meet him again.

  He rested his gauntlet on the hilt of his sword, still sheathed and unpowered. A lone frigate had pulled ahead of the rest and was now demanding the lowering of shields and the opening of docking bay doors.

  ‘Do it,’ ordered Torghun quietly. ‘Do anything they ask.’ He turned to Sanyasa and the others. ‘So here we are. We will meet them together.’

  Sanyasa remained confident. The prospect of fighting once more among the ranks of Chogoris had reinvigorated him, fuelling an already vital warrior-energy.

  They went down to the main docking bay – a cluttered space barely big enough for three landers and the still-functioning jetbikes. The six warriors emerged into the centre of the apron, in armour but helm-less and with no weapons in hand. It took a long time for the shuttle to clear the gulf between the vessels.

  Eventually it arrived, setting down before them on a wash of filthy smoke from charred down-thrusters. The craft looked beaten up, almost as much as their own equipment.

  Crew bay doors hissed open, and the embarkation ramp thudded to the adamantium deck. Eleven warriors of the V Legion emerged, ten in standard ivory power armour, all bearing glaives or power swords. The eleventh, their khan, was clad in a suit of gunmetal grey of a strange design, the only concession to the Horde being his pauldrons, which still bore the lightning-strike image, gold and red on a white ground.

  As the boarding party approached, Torghun and the others bowed. No one said a word until the steel-armoured khan stood before them.

  ‘Declare yourself,’ came the command, filtered through growling layers of vox-enhancement and barely recognisable as human.

  ‘Torghun Khan, once of the Brotherhood of the Moon,’ Torghun replied. ‘Five others of many brotherhoods, now joined to the sagyar mazan. We answer the call.’

  This information had already been conveyed once, though the questioner seemed to want to hear it again. The steel-armoured khan said nothing for a while. The energy fields on his warriors’ weapons snarled in the silence, casting an electric-blue sheen across the landing site.

  Then the khan moved closer. Torghun could hear his breath scraping through a damaged vox-grille.

  ‘This cannot be chance,’ the khan hissed. ‘This is just one more poor jest. There were never chances, not with you.’

  Slow realisation dawned. Torghun saw the way the armour had been designed to keep its occupant fighting. Its owner must once have been horribly wounded.

  ‘My brother–’ he began.

  ‘If it had been me, I would not have come back. I would have heard the order and ignored it. I would have remembered Prospero, and taken my blade and fallen across it. And even in that, I would have had no honour. There would have been no succour. No respite.’

  Torghun’s face flushed hot. He felt his gauntlets twitch and knew instinctively how quickly he could reach for his blade. He sensed the rest of the hunt-pack around him, uncertain now, making their own calculations.

  ‘The order,’ Torghun said, working hard to keep anger out of his voice, ‘came from the Khagan.’

  By now the steel mask was inches from his face. He could see scratches on the metal, the thousand marks of long combat, and could smell the lubricating oils and the faint burn of servos.

  ‘Turn around,’ the khan said. ‘Take your ship. Go back to the oblivion that was reserved for you.’

  All heard it. Out of the corner of his eye, Torghun saw the tight fury build on Sanyasa’s face. The atmosphere in the hangar became febrile, as if thunder were about to break.

  ‘The order,’ Torghun repeated, softly, firmly, ‘came from the Khagan.’

  He had not quite finished when the first blow hit – a curled fist, rammed hard into his exposed face, sending him reeling. Torghun staggered away, tasting blood across his mouth. Another strike thumped into his temple, knocking him to his knees. He would have fallen, but a steel fist caught him by the throat, lifted him up and slammed him into the nearest wall. He hung, feet barely touching the ground, struggling to breathe.

  ‘We have been so weak, for so long,’ came the voice from behind the mask, seething with a deep, cold loathing. ‘So many were lost. If all had stood firm then we would be winning this, not watching our strength bleed from us.’

  Torghun clamped his hands onto the khan’s forearm, scrabbling at the grip. His vision began to blur. He tried to speak, but could not force the words out.

  ‘Do you understand what you did?’ Amid the fury was pain, amid the pain, incomprehension. ‘Do you truly see it now? Are you blind or merely a fool?’

  Torghun heard the fizz of energy weapons igniting, and finally went for the hilt of his power sword. He was losing consciousness and needed to strike. His fingers wrapped around the grip, and his thumb slipped over the ignition stud.

  Then he was falling, thudding into the deck in a heap, his temples hammering. He pushed himself back up, teeth gritted, ready to strike.

  But the khan had let him go. He had deactivated his own blade, and was unclamping his helm-seal. Sanyasa and the others were being held back by the rest of the khan’s entourage, unable to intervene.

  Torghun watched the steel helm lift clear, his
vision returning, his fist still tight around the grip of his sword. He could have struck then, thrusting upwards.

  Shiban Khan’s face emerged. At least, it was partly Shiban’s face. Half of it had gone, replaced by synthflesh and metal plating. One eye had been replaced with an iron augmetic, and a forest of pistons and nerve-bundles protruded from the lip of his gorget. The Talskar scar was still visible, preserved amid the overlapping steel scales, zigzagging across what remained of his cheek.

  The last time Torghun had looked into those eyes had been on the Swordstorm, years ago. Everything had changed since – the augmetics dragged Shiban’s features out of symmetry, fixing a permanent snarl onto what had been an open, pleasant visage.

  Shiban lowered himself cumbersomely, his armour clanking as it compensated.

  ‘Did you think I would kill you?’ Shiban asked coldly. ‘I have my orders.’

  Torghun finally let his power sword go. ‘And you never doubted them.’

  ‘Never.’

  Torghun spat a gobbet of blood on to the deck. ‘Do not think I will beg, my brother. I came because I was called, not because I desired it.’

  ‘I care nothing for what you desire,’ said Shiban. His voice was the greatest change – it was harsher now, and not just because of the implants in his throat. ‘You will not be slain by my hand, nor by any hand in the Legion. But neither will you return to the place of honour – I will see to that, if nothing else. Whatever duty is most shameful, that is where you shall serve. When the noose closes and we are fighting again, your blades shall be absent. If there is victory, you will have no part in it – your station shall be in the rear, the reserves, among the mortals and the mindless.’

  Torghun stared up at him, his jaw set. Though he had suffered wounds too during the long exile, his face was intact, his armour functional. Of the two of them, it was he now who looked more the White Scars legionary. ‘Then you would waste our coming here.’

  ‘You will serve, but you will not atone. There is no atonement. You were sent away to die, and failed even in that.’