The Lords of Silence Read online

  Slert would not like to lose these things. He has poured much effort into them, working the bellows, refining the pumps. They are fragile, for all their apparent sturdiness – a single well-aimed bolt-shell would puncture the bladders and flood the tunnels – and thus he goes deep, keeping the Unbroken ahead and behind, scurrying through the narrow ways of the citadel’s forgotten foundations.

  His Gifted eyes are busy throughout. They peer up, they peer out, focusing and blinking under the skin. He can see constellations of souls above, rammed tight, like glowing mats of coral under a night-black ocean. The guard will be light on these places, for the castellans are more than busy elsewhere. That is what he must hope, in any case.

  Time is also short. For so long they have had all the time they could ever want, in the Eye and out of it, and yet now it is racing, ageing them, wearing at them. Perhaps this is a blip, an aberration, and the Long War will return to its silted-up course. He does not know yet which option he would prefer.

  He blinks. He senses the sicknesses, the fears, the mortal pungency of anticipation.

  Slert would have liked to have seen the primarch, to have examined him with his many perceptive eyes. He would have liked to have entered the Manse and witnessed, just for a moment, what glorious contagions have been created in that superlative body. For this reason, along with many others, he still cleaves to Vorx’s path, the one that will take them back to Mortarion’s side. All know that he is back, but few have seen him yet. To fight alongside him, at the head of the Legion just as in the Age of Wonder, that would be the pinnacle of a life. That would be worth all the toil in the laboratoriums and the toxin banks.

  They are a long way from that. They are in the heart of the wasteland, locked together with two enemies that wish to kill them. The numbers do not look good. The augurs do not look good. Something must be done to swing the scales back in their favour, and so he is condemned to leave the real slaying to Garstag and pursue this grubbing course at the root of the world.

  Slert presses on, goading the slave gangs into greater speed. He hears the whispered reports of the Unbroken as they stagger through the dripping vaults and lets his many eyes do the rest.

  When his ramshackle cavalcade finally breaks out, bursting upwards and outwards of the long and winding well shafts, it is met by screams and panic. Slert smiles at this, clambering arduously over an eroded stone lip, and limps out towards them. These are mortal humans, hundreds strong, locked in a chamber they must have thought entirely secure, and here are monsters now clawing their way up from the floor itself. How nightmarish for them. How like every bad dream they have ever had.

  ‘Calm down,’ he says, amused by the reaction. This is merely the first of many chambers he has to process. Already the devices are being hauled up, lifted by strong, calloused hands. ‘Believe me, this is for the best.’

  They are trying to get away but they cannot get out. They are like rats in a trap. Slert looks out at them, and his many eyes blink. He sees the flow of their overlapping bloodstreams, like the tracery of branches against a winter sky. Nothing he tells them is a lie. Even down here they can hear the nearing booms of combat, the approach of those who have no concern at all for their welfare, and so all this, really, is for the best.

  They are clawing at one another now, trying to force the doors open.

  ‘Begin,’ Slert tells his slaves, and the machines are dragged into position. ‘Quick as you can.’

  It doesn’t take long. He smells it first, then feels the chill as the air sighs out of the chamber. Though he cannot see it, he knows what is happening. The first blooms will be rising now, followed by the larvae that have been so carefully harvested. It must be quite, quite beautiful.

  ‘Try to relax,’ Slert says to them all, remembering how it was in the void so long ago, before all these things were known of, and how much better it has become since then. ‘Silence will make this a great deal easier.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kledo is hunting. This is something he enjoys – being cut loose, away from the slow-moving mass of the warband’s forces and out, almost, on his own. He takes only six of the Unbroken with him, ones less weighed down with Gifts and lighter on their hooves. Together, they fight their way around the margins, ignoring the set-piece actions where the tanks thunder, worming their way higher, narrower, further.

  Kledo has some art, here. He is not just a flenser of muscles and an unpicker of veins – he can create mists that confuse, generate fogs that blind. This is not proper sorcery, not a real and solid grasp of the greater principles of the warp, but a minor and fleeting understanding of optics, of frail psychologies, of the disarming properties of the whisper and the moment of doubt.

  Such things do not work on the Corpse-spawn of the Emperor, of course. Space Marines must be fought, when they cannot be eluded, and the warriors of this place prove as irritatingly efficient as any Kledo has ever encountered. His squad of seven is now down to four, and they have only managed to kill one of the enemy in return. Were it not for the intervention of warriors of the Weeping Veil during one episode on an exposed transit-span, they might have all been killed.

  They slipped off after that, leaving the zealots to fight on. A shameful action, it might be thought, and one at odds with the philosophies of the old Legion. Kledo is not, he knows, a very fine example of Mortarion’s gene-breed. He is too individual, too wedded to moral shadows. He has no faith, not really, just an appreciation for what his station and learning allow him to do. Vorx seems to understand this, and so the command he has been given here, to rove ahead and locate the master of the fortress, suits all concerned.

  The invaders are advancing freely now. He can hear the tidal crash of combat echoing down every corridor, swelling up like water against the sluices. This citadel is overrun, strangled from every direction, smothered by the weight of the forces sent against it. Kledo still cannot quite believe that there are so few Corpse-spawn left here, and can only guess that the apocalypse must have overtaken them.

  He pauses, kneeling and resting his bolt pistol on the floor in front of him. His three companions halt in the gloom, respiring softly through their battered and pocked vox-grilles.

  Kledo sniffs. The air is pungent, not just with fear and spilled blood but with something else. Something familiar, something delightful.

  Gene-seed. Vials and vials of it, ranked in vaults, kept at the optimum temperature, secured behind glittering stasis fields. He should have known they were getting close – this is one of the central hubs, a grand, octagonal tower that the enemy fought hard to retain. It must be killing them to know that it will fall in its entirety soon – there is vicious fighting all across the lower layers now, the confusion of it allowing Kledo and his quiet band to slither ahead of the game.

  Kledo finds himself salivating. He creeps forward, scanning ahead. Just around a sharp corner, there is an open hallway, scorched and raked with bullet holes, littered with bodies piled high. Halfway down that hall, set in the right-hand wall, there is an opening, a pair of bolter-blown doors. Light spills from the jagged edges, antiseptic-bright amid all the murk. He can see the faint, very rapid strobe-flicker of lumens. He can smell the chemicals more strongly. They smell the same wherever you find them, these caches. They are prescribed like that, by Mars, and they never vary. Kledo amuses himself by thinking that in all of these strongpoints, even on Chogoris, even on Fenris, there will be a chamber just like this, a little sliver of the tech-priests’ domains lodged in every monastery of every kind. At heart, the Imperials understand just what Kledo understands, that the body is just another machine, to be tinkered with and extended and stretched out. They have not yet grasped the opposite truth, most of them, that machines are really just like bodies too, and that it is actually very simple to blur the line the other way, should you have the inclination to do so.

  For a moment, he thinks the way to the vault is open. He cr
eeps forward again, coming up from his crouch, and the scent of all those lined-up vials makes his stomach grumble. Oh, such joys to be had with the contents of those glass cylinders. Oh, such wonders to be performed.

  Then he freezes. At the far end of the hallway something is moving, heedless of stealth, rushing back from another fight. In an instant, Kledo knows he has found what he has been hunting – this one is greater than the rest, with a crested helm and grime-spattered armour. He carries a thunder hammer, though the energy field has been extinguished somehow. It is caked with burned-black blood. Two others come with him – retainers, by their look. They are also battle-ravaged, covered in the visible signs of hard combat, and they carry notched blades. All three stride through the evidence of destruction, hurrying to make the shattered gateway, to shore up this last defence for just a little longer.

  Kledo opens the secure channel to Vorx. He uses the device Vorx himself gave him, the one that cuts through the hiss and muffle, and speaks directly. ‘Target located. Will engage, but you may need to be swift – there are treats here, and I am eager to gather them.’

  Then he is charging, his warriors coming with him. The White Consuls are moving too, a little faster, their movements a little more motivated by anger, by that edge of desperation that comes before destruction.

  By the time the first blow comes in, Kledo is almost giggling.

  This is going to be horrible, he thinks, just as always.

  Vorx watches it all unfold. Thus far, he has not lifted his scythe in anger. He watches the citadel burn, and it gives him no pleasure.

  He came in on the Thunderhawk Thar. He saw from high altitude the rings of fire around the entire place, which he knows from history is called Vigilia Carceris. He knows that it has been the seat of power in this subsector for the duration of the Long War, and that it has been an exemplary model of the Imperial governing pattern.

  There is much to admire in that pattern, for all that Vorx thinks it misguided. The measure of an enemy is not whether you agree with them, for there are a thousand species of disagreement, but whether they live out their philosophy with integrity. That is why he despises the Thousand Sons, for they lie to themselves about what they do and who they are, but he has never sneered at another soul, ally or enemy, who faced the truth of the universe as they understood it and did not shrink from the consequences.

  The White Consuls, to the best of his knowledge, were of the latter breed. They made their home on the cliff edge, peering like falcons into the turning gyre below. More than most Chapters of the Imperium, they knew the balance of madness that motivates the warp. They could have stationed themselves somewhere more remote, even close to the petty empire of their dead primarch, and thus lived a few centuries longer. That they didn’t, and chose this eternal vigilance poised atop the seeds of their doom, is something to admire.

  Vorx watches the noose slip tight. He processes the streams of lumen-blotch data brought to him from a thousand scattered bio-mech flies. He senses the harmonics of struggle and defiance. He listens to a hundred vox-streams at once, filtering them with his old, subtle mind. A painting emerges – a piece of gaudy art, endlessly changing, fixed around clustered points of incoming statistics.

  He watches the Apostles of the Weeping Veil as they fight, and cannot suppress a mite of distaste. It is an effective strategy, this terror-causing, this pain-worship, and yet it leaves him cold. He knows why they do it – as Philemon told him, assuming he didn’t already know, the warp is thinning fast over the citadel, and the presences on the other side are already swimming closer. The more the Apostles generate anguish, the quicker they will achieve their goal. Just as Slert predicted, they are already diverting forces to the catacombs, sacrificing a fraction of speed in order to reap a harvest of another kind.

  He watches the Lords of Silence take the brunt of the main assault in the higher towers. He observes Dragan leading the most effective inroads, making the best use of Naum he has ever seen. The Gallowsman has so many gifts, he thinks. So much raw talent.

  He watches the rings of defences crumble and implode, one by one, each level fought over bitterly. He sees clouds of pestilence rise from the burning earth, worming their way under the environment masks of the enemy soldiers. He sees the Consuls rally, again and again, clinging to every strongpoint with that damnable determination. Even when they are encircled by the choking fires of their own burnt dead, cut off, beaten back, they come at the invader still. They empty their bolters and exhaust the power units on their lasguns, then reach for blades. Their disruptors blow, their steel is notched, and then they clench their fists.

  Such power of belief, thinks Vorx. Such blind, impressive, ill-directed belief.

  Soon he can take the Thunderhawk in closer to the heart of it, dipping between spires that all glow from inner burning. The atmosphere is a poison now, a slough of fyceline and promethium, thick as the sullen seas that seethe beyond the cliff edge. Fuel dumps must have been hit somewhere, sending churning walls of red-black filth rolling through every chink of open space, staining the stone to darkness, making the entire citadel a bitter, guttering candle. Carcasses are lumped in open courtyards, some already bursting with the tiny phage creatures that will soon spill across the entire planet. Ahead of him, embedded in ruined rockcrete battlements, he sees the skeleton of a gunship, its bones carbon-dark and still smoking thickly. In the distant street levels below, tanks are toppled like children’s toys, their tracks twisted into ribbons. A few war-standards still flutter weakly from balconies, torn and threadbare. The aquilas, those most enduring symbols of the Corpse-Emperor, have been smashed and ground underfoot.

  Vorx draws closer to the great ribbed towers with their gothic eaves and domed pinnacles. He sees the pockets of remaining resistance, islands now in this storm of ruin. And it is only then, buoyed on the hot currents of the city pyre, drifting amid the embers of a crumbling empire, that he hears from Kledo at last.

  Kledo, cunning Kledo. Sent ahead to isolate the greatest of the warriors within this collapsing fortress, the one soul destined to die at Vorx’s own hand. Vorx even knows his name – Cymar Xydias, who has already served for centuries and will die as he has lived – unyielding, spitting defiance, carrying himself with that maddening, error-strewn dignity.

  The Thar is turned towards the signal. Vorx does not hurry. Kledo will be fighting by now, set against a foe he has no chance of besting. The Thunderhawk booms its way under the parapets of the inner citadel, angling to avoid its smoke-streamed walls. The gunship reaches a high balustrade scattered with blown brickwork and hovers on its smoggy turbines. Vorx stirs himself, reaches for Exact and departs the gunship, leaping heavily from the juddering platform. His twelve body­guards come with him – all in Tartaros plate, carrying cleavers, mauls and morning stars, all dragging themselves through their own mires of entrail-spilling Gifts.

  Kledo voxes again. ‘Getting difficult. Haste appreciated.’

  The Surgeon’s voice is strained. Vorx does not hurry. Instead, he watches. The device he gave Kledo is not, as the Surgeon imagines, a simple comm-bead. It has the eyeball of a daemon locked within its lead heart, plucked from the beautiful face of a Keeper of Secrets and slaved to Vorx’s patient will. When the siegemaster closes his eyes, he sees the world through Kledo’s position, his vantage swinging from the amulet set about Kledo’s neck.

  Thus Vorx has the leisure to witness Xydias’ last great kill. Even as Vorx sends his bodyguards off to seal the chambers beyond and prevent any interruptions, he sees the White Consuls Chapter Master hurl the thunder hammer into Kledo’s midriff, smashing the ceramite and twisting the shards deep into puckered skin. He sees the lesser warriors grapple around the two Titans, neutralising one another and succumbing to their own necessary deaths.

  In truth, though, Xydias is the only one there who matters. He is as magnificent as Vorx hoped he would be, and he far outclasses Kledo. The mismatch is
almost embarrassing – Xydias bludgeons Kledo, cracking him back a pace, then again, with two reverse sweeps of the hammer. Kledo tries to fire at him, close range, and has his gun hand mangled for his trouble. Xydias is enraged, of course, calling out to his Emperor with every strike. The fury is incandescent and generates its own strange, intangible aura of kinetic power. Kledo’s cynicism has no purchase on this, and so he is smashed back again, slamming into the wall at his back, his corroded powerpack dented amid plumes of kicked-out dust.

  Still Vorx does not hurry. He enters the antechambers leading to the gene-vaults and treads over still-warm bodies, White Consuls and Death Guard, Space Marines and Unbroken. Now he is close enough to hear the real, echoing cracks and slams of combat, though there are still a few doorways to traverse.

  The others in that place are soon dead, all but the two who concern him. Xydias loses his companions, but so does Kledo. The Chapter Master has proved enough for all of them. Now he is closing on the retreating Surgeon with the light of retribution in his bloodstained helm lenses.

  ‘Where… are you?’ Kledo pants, working hard just to stay alive.

  Vorx maintains his steady pace. He sees Xydias smash Kledo’s helm open, exposing that narrow, eroded face. He sees Xydias land a heavy punch, shattering Kledo’s shoulder, then follow with a one-handed swing of the thunder hammer that lifts Kledo up and hurls him across the blood-pooled floor.

  Vorx crosses the last threshold just in time to see, with his real eyes, Xydias grab Kledo by the neck-guard and haul his limp body back up, only to slam it down again. The Chapter Master raises a boot and stamps imperiously on Kledo’s exposed face, crunching bone.