Eidolon: The Auric Hammer, page 10
Movement drew his eye for a microsecond as more warriors flooded into the chamber. The bark of the Cthonians’ bolters ratcheted up, becoming a howl of shot. A storm enveloped them. Shells ricocheted from Eidolon’s vibrating armour, turned aside by the sonic aftershocks resonating through his body. Bone and plate were both mere conduits for the glory of the song, for the Kakophonic resonance that pulsed from him with every movement and every breath. He wore the scream like a mantle, cloaking him in atrocity and wonder.
Fabius’ work had been beautiful and painstaking, and this was its culmination. This was the gift Slaanesh had granted them.
He screamed again and a pillar shattered, making the vaulted ceiling shake. Cracks were spreading along the martial murals that encircled the combatants, destroying the thin facade of competence and endurance.
They have died, and now we die with them. Dragged down into the mortality of others, killed by the demise of a culture. Such a joy!
The savage elation flooded him with each blow he took, every wound he received. The will to survive.
Alone he could not best them. Even a warrior of his calibre could not slay Gherog and his sworn blades alone.
He staggered back, away from Gherog’s bladework, back into the winding corridors of the Palace Militant, and he luxuriated in the pain. Holding it close to his hearts, turning it into the fuel he required to flee, to regroup, and to finally triumph.
The dance, the game, the song continued through the maze of corridors – through accessways and maintenance culverts, out into the wider avenues of martial prowess and organised defence.
Where Eidolon could not find a path, he simply made one. He forced his armoured bulk through doorways too small for him, slamming his way through in a cloud of ruined stonework. Where blast doors and bulwark shields barred his progress, he simply let his hammer speak. The crackling weapon reduced each one to glowing slag, left to be trodden underfoot.
He passed through chambers whose walls were scrimshawed with records of death and victory, under arches of solemn murals that spoke of the nobility of sacrifice. A culture steeped in such bleak terror of what lay beyond their sky that they had become sepulchral and paranoid.
A healthy fear and suspicion. This is where you embraced your very nature. This world is in your soul.
Be silent, Eidolon willed. You are nothing. Gherog’s puppet. A daemon shadow of the Third Legion, dredged up by Horus’ bastards to weaken me.
We could be so much more than that.
He tapped the vox as he fled, parsing the comms as the chambers blurred past him. He barely took in the gold statuary, the murals of old victories, the etched names of the honoured dead. Men and women lost to history, their achievements drowned by the new Imperium’s and then obliterated by its rebellious sons.
‘Die, bastards! Your agony is like a fine wine! Come forth and die for my Lord Eidolon, for my primarch! For Slaanesh!’ Malakris’ voice roared in through the bead, a torrent of raw and unfiltered combat mania.
‘Support! Cover the flank, the Reavers are using the roofs to– Heavy weapons! Lascannons, target the bridge! Face me, you cowards! Come forth and fight me like warriors!’ Vocipheron’s feed was measured, his pique directed at an enemy who would not be pinned down, fighting like the gangers of their venomous home world. Refusing to acknowledge any rules of war save their own.
Plegua could not be raised; instead there was only the howl and scream of static as his sonic weaponry overwhelmed any hope of broadcast.
Eventually Eidolon managed to contact Von Kalda, still in orbit.
‘My lord?’ the Apothecary asked, his tone almost bored.
‘How many men remain with you?’ Eidolon hissed, turning to fire again at his pursuers.
‘Deployment was near total, my lord. A hundred remain, at best.’ He paused, counting some invisible tally, processing logistics as readily as he parsed disease symptoms. ‘Malakris had me send down the rending vats. He has given orders to his warriors that all are to be fed to them. Enemies, cousins… Perhaps even a brother or two should they offend him.’
Eidolon cursed. His skull pounded with the effort of his escape. He had thought, known on some intrinsic level, that Gherog had been lying and this was simply an attack of opportunity. The vaunted pride of the Sons of Horus, wounded and pricked to pique.
But it had been Malakris all along. Acting against orders. Bleeding the world raw, until the suffering of the multitudes would flow like wine. He wondered how many other warriors would be committing themselves to atrocity, all across the world. Idling, wasting time that should be spent securing the way to Terra.
‘I need you to take command of those warriors still aboard the ships.’
‘My lord?’
‘Ready them for transit and deploy upon my signal. I want them with me. Further, send a priority signal to Malakris, Vocipheron and Plegua. Have them join us, with their forces. Fighting realignment of the line, to centre upon me. I expect you will also have to prepare for void engagement.’
Von Kalda sighed gently over the vox. ‘What happened down there, my lord? This was an exercise. A mere gesture of cooperation. It was sport, and nothing more.’
‘Matters have sharply accelerated,’ he snarled. Bolt-rounds detonated about his head, showering him with iron and stone. ‘Deploy the men. Have the shipmasters ready for the kill stroke.’ He fell silent, considering his options. ‘You will lead them in person.’
‘Me, lord?’ Von Kalda had the audacity to laugh at that. ’What have I done to deserve this bleak honour?’
Whispers coiled through the tunnels, dancing mockingly on the wind. Eidolon bit back his rage and pushed onwards, slamming through another door, out and finally free into the smoke-stained air.
‘You are a good soldier, Von Kalda,’ Eidolon admitted grudgingly. ‘The warp is still burning about us, mocking us. If this is some base Cthonian trickery or sorcery, then I would see it cut out. You will see to the war. And I…’ He hesitated. He could feel the pulse and ache in his soul, throbbing once again as the Shattered King’s dark majesty reared towards ascendancy, bound, he did not doubt, to the humours of its Cthonian master.
TWELVE
sin and punishment
The city died around him, screaming its last agonies into the smoke-dark sky.
Eidolon was no stranger to this. It had been as natural to him as breathing, even before the great infamy at Isstvan. Before the pitched battles in the ruins of the Choral City and the Dropsite Massacre that had followed it upon Isstvan V, he had long since become inured to atrocity in the name of a greater goal. The war had become total, as perhaps it had always been fated to. Distant towers burned and toppled, while around him the slab-sided war-habs of the Tatricalans had been prised open and broken. Great sheets of white stone had slid in mock landslides, crushing those soldiers too brave or stupid to flee.
Now the battle itself had become an example. A show of force. If this was what the Emperor’s Children did to the enemy, in the Phoenician’s name, then what horrors would they bring to bear against the Sons of Horus?
Gherog’s men had fallen back, forming up their defences, readying themselves for the inevitable confrontation. If they could not kill him within, trapped by the rock and steel of the fortress maze, then he knew they would regroup and bring their might to bear. A final thrust of the spear.
Perhaps it is all in futility. The Emperor. The Warmaster. Feasting on the galaxy’s scraps, as though their victory will be absolute and eternal. Only the gods endure. Their designs have been cut into the universe’s flesh since time out of mind, and we have only just learned. There were lessons and warnings in Old Night, and we burned them rather than accept the truth.
Truth. Lies. None of it truly mattered to him any longer. Eidolon was beyond such things. All that mattered was the challenge.
Life, such as it remained to him, was struggle and pain. He had been found wanting once, and he would never succumb again. He had been tested, over and over. Isstvan. Prismatica. Iydris. The Kalium Gate. Horvia. And beyond them, battles beyond count. Wars fought for primarch and Warmaster, for himself alone and for the honour and glory of the Legion. It was all fleeting. Transient. Pointless in the grand scheme.
Artillery detonated somewhere above, casting mad shadows as the world shook and then realigned. The stars were gone, dead, swallowed by the fury and cacophony of the war. Even now, he was certain, commands would be winging their way from squad to squad, realigning the front lines in the newborn conflict. Allies of convenience would be steadily becoming enemies.
It had been inevitable, he knew. The barbarian filth could not be trusted to restrain their baser natures. The urges and desires of the III were far beyond anything that Gherog’s rabble could conceive of. They were things now understood to be sacred. He would have unleashed his own men, before long. Given them leave to hunt and prey, to daub the cities with the blood of friend and foe alike.
Betrayal was its own reward, yet the trap had sprung too soon, and he suspected the hand that had forced it.
Malakris.
The suspicion grew to surety as he climbed over a smouldering heap of rubble and vaulted down, back into Liberation Square. Other elements of the Legion had already begun to gather, tearing at the statuary with hooked blades and burning them to slag with meltaguns. All fell still and silent as Eidolon strode back into the square, turning his hammer repeatedly in one hand. He struck the very figure of a conquering warlord, stained with blood and soot.
Ashes had begun to fall around them, smearing everything in a fine layer of greasy human remains. The exaggerated colours of the III Legion’s armour had become muted, almost grey. They stood amidst the ruins of their old achievement like ghosts, echoes of what they had been. Perhaps once they would have been afraid of what they were becoming, yet now they embraced it without fear or doubt.
‘My lord!’ Malakris shouted across the square, striding through the carnage, slivers of human meat trailing from his claws. He grinned broadly and flourished a bow. ‘We have prepared quite the spectacle for you!’
Eidolon nodded absently, looking around, scanning from face to face. Vocipheron was panting, exertion writ across his features, either from the desperate rush to the square or from the frenzy of combat. Plegua was placid, collected, blissful as he surveyed the carnage. Bodies were being dragged out in front of him, a parade of mortal victims alongside one of the Sons of Horus. The giant’s corpse had already been mutilated, limbs torn free, entrails hanging loose beneath the cracked ruin of breastplate and the shattered mass of his fused ribs.
Malakris was laughing, posturing, preening. Eidolon could taste bile in his throat, his windpipe still contracting with the effort of his last psychosonic screams. He stepped forward, let the hammer’s haft slide down his grip, and rested it upon the shattered dais.
‘Your work?’ he asked, gesturing about him. ‘The Sons of Horus?’
Malakris blinked, like a surprised reptile, tilting his head. ‘Your orders were–’
Eidolon’s fist swung round and caught Malakris in the cheek, knocking him back. Blood graced his knuckles and he swung again. Again. Blows rained down upon the other warrior, forcing him to his one knee. Rings and jewelled studs tumbled free in a rain of despoiled finery, clattering and jangling amidst the spilled blood.
Eidolon seized Malakris by the throat and hefted him up, bringing the warped and sharpened fingertips of his other hand down the captain’s melted features, gouging three lines upon his face.
‘You fool!’ Eidolon snapped. ‘You impetuous cur!’
‘You…’ Malakris slurred. ‘You bade me. You gave the order.’ Blood ran freely from his split lips and splintered teeth. He forced a shattered smile and then spat, heaving gobbets of blood, his shoulders shaking with pleasure. ‘You were the voice in my ear, lord commander. You were the call to arms. To slaughter them all and let Slaanesh feast on who they wished. You stood before me and threw forth your arms, and told me to slay them all.’
‘I heard it too,’ Vocipheron said quietly. Eidolon dropped Malakris to the ground and turned about, striding towards the swordsman. He felt, for just a moment, that he might rend the man apart with his bare hands. ‘Your voice, my lord. Telling me to burn it all to ashes. To tear the world to pieces.’ He paused and turned his gaze to the fallen figure of his rival. ‘I ignored it, though. I could not raise you on the vox. There was no clarity. No chain of command.’ He sniffed. ‘I was not enough of a fool to be waylaid by the deceptions of daemons.’
Malakris hissed through broken teeth. ‘Better to listen to the voice of the gods than to deny them. Why should we restrain ourselves? There are passions and pleasures beyond number, merely waiting to be born.’
‘Be silent, whelp,’ Plegua intoned, his voice thrumming with lethal resonances. He hefted his great weapon, the dire-singing instrument of ruin, and directed it at Malakris’ prone form. ‘I have heard the call and ignored it as the falsehood it is. I am the Ruin-singer. It is for me to parse the true notes from out of the Eternal Song.’
A tower exploded somewhere behind him, haloing Til Plegua in fire and fury. Masonry rained down, crushing the abandoned bodies of the Wallsmen, mutilating the defeated further. They were all but forgotten now, in the face of the new enemy, but Eidolon almost found it within himself to pity them.
When the old was swept away and the past was ashes, then the future could be born from out of history’s charnel pit. There were few more fitting midwives to such a thing than the III Legion. These men and women were mere fodder for that destiny.
‘You are all sons of the Phoenician,’ Eidolon growled. ‘Our origins and our philosophies may be disparate, but here and now, all that matters is showing our enemy our strength! They think themselves our betters, but they are arrogant barbarians! The Sons of Horus will forever look down on us as the stunted Legion they had to mother. We will prove to them that we are more than that blighted beginning. We are warriors of the Third Legion. Of the Third Millennial. None are our equal.’
They were all listening now. Factions forgotten, allegiances resharpened in this, the appointed hour. It was an oath of moment, after a fashion. In the old way.
Then, they had sworn themselves to their brothers and their father. To a distant Emperor and the dreams they had called Unity. To a Great Crusade that was increasingly outside of their control. To a council of mortal bureaucrats and a hierarchy of liars and fools.
‘I have seen the calibre of our enemy,’ Eidolon laughed. ‘A horde of savages, no different to the Khan’s rabble. These Cthonians think themselves our betters because their master was first-found.’ He strode back towards Glory Aeterna and hefted the weapon up, holding it high. The hammer’s gilding glimmered in the flamelight, resonating strength even with its power field disarmed.
‘They suppose us to be weak and divided, imagine us to be mindless monsters, devoid of purpose – slaves to our impulses.’ Eidolon glared down at Malakris as he began to scramble back to his feet, blood still running over his chin and staining his gorget. ‘We will prove them wrong. We shall play them at their own game, challenging their surety and breaking their resolve.
‘They favour their precious spear-tip,’ Eidolon said, laughing. ‘We shall meet like with like.’
THIRTEEN
blade to blade
The city skyline burned, casting the spiral fortresses in another false dawn.
The outer precincts were aflame, end to end, their great habitation barracks sliding inwards to block thoroughfares and supply lines. Here, towards the centre, Legion armour, aerial elements and orbital bombardment had carved great furrows into the once pristine defences, spiderwebbing the city with cracks so vast that Titans could march down them.
Stormbirds and Thunderhawks duelled in the skies, while Xiphon-pattern fighters swept down between them, locked in their own mortal dogfights. Ships that had once been pure purple and gold, now gleaming in a maddening oil-on-water hue, fought against their sea-green rivals. Searing beams of las-energy and the blazing contrails of missiles cut across the heavens, even as the stars above began to move. Ships battled in the void above like warring gods, their triumphs and deaths mere flickers of light amidst the storm clouds.
Yet even far below, Eidolon could hear their screams. The death cries of the men who piloted them, the howls of their dying machine spirits, the tearing roar as the great flyers hurtled from above to shatter and burn against the slab walls of the city. Each death was a beautiful thing, an entire world snuffed out in an instant, a lifetime of experiences offered upon the altar of war.
The air sang. It resonated with potential, as though the whole world were a bell, struck and set to ringing. Each impact, each volley, each sanctified death, fed what waited beyond.
Tatricala had become the wider war in microcosm, as the physical rebellion gave way to the ever-burning supernal conflict behind reality’s veil. The warp took no sides. It played its games without the understanding of those caught in its webs. The Word Bearers and the Thousand Sons had ever deluded themselves that they could shape and command the immaterial. Here, now, those Legions who shunned the psyker and its gifts felt the double-edged sword that came with the warp’s caress.
Eidolon could feel the suggestions of claws as they raked at his armour, the whispers now loud in his ears. He had almost believed that Malakris and the others were mad and broken, slaves to impulse and ruled by whim alone.
Yet the voice endured, taunting and mocking, purring in the recesses of his mind, seeking purchase.
This is what you were made for. Raised up from the dust to bring the galaxy to heel. You were made to conquer creation, just as we were shaped to rule it. Kings are nothing without a kingdom. All monarchs deserve a throne.
