Brothers of the Storm Read online

  I stumbled as I reached the top. My foot slipped on loose scree, and I staggered against the rock. I reached out with my right hand, hoping to catch hold of the lip of the ridge. Instead of stone, my fingers clamped on to an armoured hand. It held me firmly.

  I looked up, startled, to find myself staring into two golden eyes set in a leather-brown face.

  'General Ilya Ravallion, Departmento Munitorum,' said the owner of the face, inclining his head politely. 'Be careful.'

  I swallowed, holding onto his gauntlet tightly.

  'Thank you,' I said. 'I will.'

  HIS NAME WAS Targutai Yesugei. He told me that as soon as I'd dusted myself down and recovered my breath. We stood, the two of us, on the ridge. The dry gullies and defiles of Ullanor ran away from us in every direction, a maze of charred debris and gravel. Above us, dark clouds drifted.

  'Not much of a world,' he said.

  'Not any more,' I agreed.

  His voice was like the voice of every Space Marine I had ever encountered - low, resonant, held quiet, echoing up from his barrel chest like crude oil slapping at the sides of a deep well. If he ever chose to raise it, I knew it could be terrifyingly loud. Back then, though, it was a curiously calming sound to hear, out there in the aftermath of devastation.

  He wasn't as tall as some I'd met. Even clad in his armour plate, I had the impression of a certain wiriness; a compact, lean frame under sun-hardened flesh. His bald head was crowned with a long scalp-lock that snaked down around his neck. Tattoos had been inked into the skin on his temples. I couldn't make out what they signified - they looked like the letters of a language I didn't understand. He carried a skull-topped staff, and wore a glistening crystalline hood over the shoulders of his armour.

  Amid a lattice of other ritual scarring, he had a broad, jagged mark running down his left cheek, from just under the eye socket almost to the chin. I knew what that was. For a long time that custom had been the only thing I'd known about them. They did it themselves once they'd been inducted - they made the scars that gave the Legion its name.

  His eyes seemed golden. His irises were almost bronze, and the whites were a pale yellow. I hadn't expected that. I didn't know then whether all of them were like that, or whether it was just him.

  'You fight on this world, Ilya Ravallion?' he asked.

  He spoke Gothic awkwardly, with a thick, guttural accent. I hadn't expected that either.

  'I did not,' I said.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'I was sent to seek an audience with the Khan.'

  'Know how many he grants?'

  'I do not.'

  'Not many,' he said.

  A half-smile played over his brown lips as he spoke. His skin creased with every smile, wrinkling at the eyes. He looked like he smiled often and easily.

  In those early exchanges, I could not decide whether he was toying with me or whether he was serious. His clipped delivery made it hard to divine his meaning.

  'I was hoping, lord,' I said, 'that you might assist me.'

  'So you do not wish to speak to me,' he said. You use me to get to him.'

  I decided to stick to the truth.

  'That is correct,' I said.

  Yesugei chuckled. It was a tight, hard, wind-dried sound, though not without humour.

  'Good,' he said. 'I am... intermediary. That is what we do, the zadyin arga; we speak from one, to the other. Worlds, universes, souls - is much the same.'

  I was still tense. I couldn't tell whether things were going well. A great deal rested on the meeting I had been sent to arrange, and it would be hard to go back having achieved nothing. At the very least, though, Yesugei was still talking, which I took as a good sign.

  All the while I took in details, storing them away, my mind working automatically. I couldn't help myself.

  His armour is Mark II. Indicates conservatism? The skull on his staff is unidentifiable; Chogorian fauna, no doubt. Equine? Check with Miert later.

  'If you had your audience,' he asked, 'what would you say?'

  I had dreaded that particular question, though it had been bound to come up.

  'Forgive me, lord, it is for his ears only. It concerns business between the Fifth Legion and the Administratum.'

  Yesugei gave me a shrewd look.

  'And what would you say if I reached into your mind, right now, and took the answer? Do not think you are shielded from me.'

  I stiffened. As soon as he made the suggestion, I knew he could do it.

  'I would prevent you, if I could,' I said.

  He nodded again.

  'Good,' he said. Though, in case you are worried, I would not do it.'

  He smiled at me again. Against all expectation, I found myself beginning to relax. That was strange, standing as I was next to a towering, armoured, genhanced, psychically-charged killing machine.

  Spoken Gothic surprisingly poor. A reason for unsatisfactory communication with centre? Had assumed linguistic aptitude; may have to revise.

  'I admire perseverance, General Ravallion,' Yesugei said. You work hard to find me here. You always work hard, ever since you start.'

  What did that mean? I hadn't expected him to have researched me. As soon as I thought that, though, I admonished myself - what did I think, that they were really savages?

  'We know you,' he went on. We like what we see. I wonder, though, how much you know us? You know what you let yourself in for, dealing with White Scars?'

  For the first time, his smile ghosted with something like menace.

  'I don't,' I said. 'But I can learn.'

  'Maybe,' he said.

  He turned away from me, looking back out over the smoulder-dark landscape. He didn't say anything. I hardly dared to breathe. We stood next to one another as the clouds scudded overhead, both of us locked in silence.

  After a long time like that, Yesugei spoke again.

  'Some problems are complex; most are not,' he said. 'The Khan does not grant many audiences. Why? Not many people ask.'

  He turned back to me.

  'I see what I can do,' he said. 'Do not leave Ullanor. If news is good, I will find way to contact you.'

  I struggled to hide my relief.

  'Thank you,' I said.

  He gave me an almost indulgent look.

  'Do not thank me yet,' he said. 'I only say I will try.'

  A deep, raw humour danced in those golden eyes as he looked at me.

  'They say he is elusive,' he said. 'You will hear that a lot. But listen: he is not elusive; he is at the centre. Wherever he is, that is the centre. He will seem to have broken the circle, drifted to the edge, right until the end, and then you will see that the world has come to him, and he has been waiting for it all along. Do you understand?'

  I looked him in the eye.

  'I don't, Khan Targutai Yesugei of the zadyin arga,' I said, sticking to my policy of honesty and hoping I'd got the titles right. 'But I can learn.'

  III. TARGUTAI YESUGEI

  I WAS SIXTEEN years old. Those were the years of Chogoris, though, which are short. If I had been born on Terra, I would have been twelve.

  I sometimes think our world forced us to grow up quickly - the seasons pass in rapid succession, and we learn the skills of survival very soon. Out on the high Altak, the weather can change so suddenly, from frost to baking sun, that you need to be nimble on your feet. You have to learn how to hunt, to feed yourself, to make or find shelter, to understand the tortuous, swaying politics of our many clans and peoples.

  But perhaps we did not grow up quickly enough. In the days after the Master of Mankind came to us, we found that our warrior ways - our speed, our prowess - made us strong. We did not pause to reflect on what our weaknesses were. It was left to others to show us those, by which time it was too late to change them.

  Before He came I did not know that there were other worlds, Populated by other men with other ways of being. I only knew of one sky and one earth, and they seemed both infinite and eternal. N
ow that I have seen other earths and marched to war under their strange skies, I find my mind returning to Chogoris often. It is diminished in my imagination, but also more precious. I would go back if I could. I do not know if that will ever be possible.

  More than a century has passed since I was a child. I ought to be wiser, and I ought to have left my memories behind me, but we never leave our childhood behind us: we carry it with us, and it whispers to us, reminding us of the paths we could have taken.

  I ought to be wiser, and not listen, but I do. Who does not listen to the voice of their memories?

  I WAS ALONE then. I had gone into the mountains of the Ulaav, walking the high ways. Those mountains are not tall, not like those of Fenris or Qavalon. They are not as majestic as the mighty Khum Karta, where our fortress-monastery was raised, many years later. The Ulaav are ancient mountains, worn down by millennia of winds from across the Altak. In summer a rider can crest the summits and never leave the saddle; in winter only berkut and ghosts can endure the cold.

  I had been sent there by the khan. Those were the days when we were always at war, whether it was with one another or against the forces of the Khitan, and a boy with golden eyes was a prize worth much to all sides.

  Later, I read accounts of those wars written by Imperial remembrancers. I struggled to do this as, to my shame, I never learned their language as well as I should have. Many of us in the Legion had such struggles. Perhaps Khorchin and Gothic were too far removed from one another for easy comprehension. Perhaps that was why we and the Imperium were always at cross purposes, even in the beginning.

  In any case, those remembrancers referred to places I have never heard of and men who never lived, like the Palatine of Mundus Planus. I do not know where they got those names from. When we were fighting the Khitan we called their emperor by his title – Khagan, a khan of khans. We had no idea what his family name was though I found it out later. He was called Ketugu Suogo. Since we keep so few records of our own, this knowledge is scarce. I am possibly one of the few left who knows it, and when I am gone, his name will be gone too.

  Does that matter? Does it matter that we were fighting a man who never lived on a world that I have never heard of? I think it does. Names are important; history is important.

  Symbols are important.

  I WAS ALONE because I had to be. The khan would not have sent such a precious commodity into the mountains if he could have helped it; by choice, he would have surrounded me with men of his keshig, sworn to protect me should the enemy get wind of my vulnerability and seek to snatch me away.

  Unfortunately for him, the test of heaven only worked on a single mind. We had strange and bashful gods on Chogoris; they only showed themselves to lone souls, and only where the land rose to meet the infinite sky and the veil between realms was thin and perilous.

  So, even knowing what danger waited for me, the khan's warriors left me at the foot of the mountains, and I made my way up into the heights alone. Once I started walking I did not look back. The air was already biting, whistling under my rough kaftan and chafing against my flesh. I shivered, huddling my arms to my chest and keeping my head down.

  The valleys of the Ulaav mountains were famously beautiful. Meltwater created lakes of cobalt in the shadowed laps of the Peaks. Pine forests ran down sheer rock-shoulders in cloaks of dark green, dense and glossy like lacquered armour. The sky above the summits was glass-clear, so intensely blue it hurt the eyes to look at. Everything there was hard, stern, clean. Even in my half-chilled state, I was moved by it. I understood, as I neared the high places, why the gods lingered there.

  Aside from that, I felt nothing - no visions, no magical powers, no bursts of supernatural strength. The only mark of my uniqueness was my eyes, and they had done nothing thus far but bring me trouble. If it had not been for the khan I would likely long since have been killed, but he recognised my potential before I did. He was a far-sighted man, with a vision for Chogoris that I was too young to understand. He also knew how useful I could be to him if he was right.

  I climbed higher, following tracks that were seldom trodden and which were little more than pale impressions on loose stone. By the time I stopped, my head light from the thin air, I was high up on the eastern scarps and could see how far I had come.

  Both of Chogoris's moons were up, even though the sun had not yet set in the north. I was looking out across the vast expanse of the eastern Altak - the endless plain of scrub-grass that ran away further than anyone had ever travelled. From my vantage, I could see tiny sparks of camp fires out in the wilds, separated by huge, empty distances and overlooked by the lowering sky.

  Those lands were the khan's, though in those days they were still contested by other tribes and clans. Beyond them, over the eastern horizon, lay the realms of the Khitan.

  I had never seen so far. I sat down, leaning against a shelf of bare rock, gazing out across the vista before me. Night-birds wheeled high above, and saw the first stars come out in the frost-blue sky.

  I do not know how long I sat there, a single soul exposed on the flanks of the Ulaav, shivering as night fell across the world.

  I should have made a fire. I should have begun the work of making a shelter. For some reason, I did nothing. Maybe I was fatigued from the climb, or dizzy from the sparse air, but I stayed where I was, cross-legged, gazing out across the darkening Altak, mesmerised by the tiny golden lights glowing out on the plain, held in thrall by their silver counterparts in the arch of heaven above.

  I felt that I was in the right place then. I did not need to do anything, or change anything, or move anything.

  If something was going to happen, it would happen to me there. I would wait for it, as patient as an aduu under halter.

  It could find me. I had done enough travelling.

  I WOKE SUDDENLY.

  It must have been much later - the sky was velvet dark, pocked with a glittering cloak of stars. Distant campfires still twinkled out on the plain, now sunk into deep, deep blue. It was bitterly cold, and the wind rustled the dry branches around me.

  One by one, I saw the fires across the Altak die. They winked out of existence, leaving the plain even emptier - just a void, broken by nothing.

  I tried to move. I found that I could glide upwards, swimming through the air as if it were water. I looked down at myself and saw a sleek, feather-lined body. I rose quickly, circling higher, feeling the breeze lift my trembling wings.

  The mountains fell away below me. The curve of the world's horizon dropped. In the east, over where the lands of the Khitan lay, I saw more lights going out. The whole world, all of it, was sliding into darkness.

  I hovered, tilting a little in the high winds. I called out, and heard the crii of a night-bird. It felt like I was the only living thing in creation.

  Soon I was alone with the stars. They continued to burn silver in the space above me. I flew ever higher, beating my wings against thinning air.

  I came amongst them. I saw lights burning in the vaults of heaven. I saw fires raging and curls of flame flickering in the darkness. I saw things I did not recognise, mighty iron-clad things with prows like ploughshares, torn apart and reduced to drifting pieces. Forces too immense for me to comprehend were fighting across the trackless void.

  So these are the gods, I thought.

  I passed among the wreckage of those things, marvelling at the shapes and symbols carved on shards of spinning metal. I saw a many-headed snake-creature embossed upon one fragment; the head of a wolf on another. Then I saw a sign I recognised - a lightning strike in gold and red, the eternal mark of the khans.

  Part of me knew those things were visions, and that my body remained where I had left it on the slopes of the Ulaav. Another part of me, perhaps the wiser, recognised that I was seeing something real, something more than real, something that underpinned reality like the poles of a ger underpin the fabric.

  Then, like the fires on the Altak, the fires in the stars faded away. Everything went dark.
I knew, though, that I was not falling asleep again. I knew that something else was coming for me.

  I WAS OUT on the plain. It was noon, and the sun burned white in the empty sky. The wind came down from the mountains, rustling the scrub-grass and tugging at my kaftan.

  I looked down and saw a cup in my left hand. It was earthenware, like all the cups of the ordu. Blood-red liquid filled it nearly to the brim.

  I looked up again, shading my eyes against the piercing sun, and saw four figures standing before me. Their outlines were shaky, as if broken by heat-haze, except that it wasn't hot.

  All of them had the bodies of men and the heads of animals. One had the head of a blue-feathered bird with amber eyes;

  One had the head of a serpent; one had the head of a red-eyed bull; one had the decaying head of a fish, already yellowed with putrescence.

  All of them looked at me, shimmering in the direct light. They lifted their arms and pointed.

  None of them spoke. They did not have human lips to speak with. For all that, I knew what they wanted me to do. Somehow their thoughts took shape in my own mind, as clear and distinct as if I had summoned them up myself.

  Drink, they told me.

  I looked down at the cup in my left hand. The liquid within was hot. Froth had collected around the rim. I felt a sudden thirst break out. I lifted the cup halfway to my mouth, and my hand trembled as I did so.

  I knew something important was in there, but I held back. My instincts warred within me.

  Drink, they told me.

  The tone of their command gave me pause. I did not know why they wanted me to do it.

  It was then that I saw Him. He came from the opposite direction. He had the shape of a man too, but the halo of light around Him made it hard to make much more out than that. I could not see His face. He was coming toward me, and I knew, without knowing how, that He had travelled from a long, long way away.

  He gave me no command. Other than that, He was like the four beast-figures. There was some relationship between them, something I could sense but did not understand. The Four were scared of Him. I knew then that if I drank from the cup, then I would be defying Him - if I did not drink, I would be defying them.