Eidolon: The Auric Hammer, page 11
‘Be silent,’ he hissed to himself. Eidolon strode ahead of his men, far enough away that none of them could bear witness to his mania. He had been thought weak and broken before, as though the primarch’s blade had robbed him of what he was.
He might have thought that once. They had declared him the Soul-Severed, a shattered being. He had been pitied and reviled, mocked and underestimated, yet always he had risen to seize power. Every setback could be surmounted, even without the hollow promises of the Shattered King.
Now the gods themselves sought to make sport of him, and the Warmaster’s vermin sought to shame him. He refused to submit. Fate could toy with him all it wanted.
‘I have passed through death. There is nothing left to fear.’
As though in answer, the heavens opened once more and a fresh brace of Dreadclaw and Kharybdis assault craft slammed home, disgorging more warriors of the III in their wretched glory. Von Kalda strode through the throng of deploying Astartes, flanked by fresh Legion warriors, as yet unblooded.
‘Equerry,’ Eidolon said. ‘Welcome to Tatricala.’ He watched Von Kalda drink in every detail of the dying world around them. Like any other warrior of the Emperor’s Children, he was forever seeking advantage, parsing every detail of the warzone.
‘Lord,’ he said eventually. Eidolon smiled.
‘Can you taste it?’ he asked. ‘The warp? I can feel it everywhere. Coiling and clawing at me. It will slither in and undo this world, as it tried to do with the fleet. They have set their game and all we can do is play our parts upon the board.’
‘Who have?’ Von Kalda asked.
‘The gods,’ Eidolon purred. ‘They toy with our little lives, yet the Dark Prince is the most playful of their number, seeking always to ensnare us with our own vices. His hand wounds and it shapes, and we are all made stronger and stranger by it.’
‘Braced by the venom, inoculated for the future to come.’
‘How philosophical you’ve become, equerry,’ Eidolon said. He reached up and smoothed some of the remaining lank hair from his eyes. ‘I will know if Gherog tries to use his sorceries against me. I feel it in my soul. Burning like poison.’
‘If he…?’
‘This is a game, yes? I have told you as much. The servants of the Warmaster are not created equal, not in the eyes of his favoured Sons. He has set these forces against me for some petty advantage. Gherog. Who else could it be? It is not simple coincidence or providence that puts us on this path. Not the whim of fate. It is design. Malicious design.’
Von Kalda looked at Eidolon, concern momentarily flickering across his childlike features, before he busied himself once more with his narthecium.
‘The men are gathered,’ Eidolon said, and activated his hammer. ‘Now is the time to strike. Now we show our cousins what we are. Face to face and blade to blade.’
Eidolon led the advance, up through the central thoroughfare of a great processional, sweeping his hammer around to reduce statuary to dust with single strokes.
He had allowed a rough vanguard of the less disciplined warriors to rove ahead of him, indulging their lusts as they went. Already there were Tatricalan bodies crucified to the walls, their bowels hanging loose, the marble daubed in mad smears and whorls of blood and other fluids. The Emperor’s Children made art as they moved, twisting the battlefield into a tableau of the insane and the depraved.
For all their other failings, the Sons of Horus exhibited no such distractions.
Sea-green-armoured warriors hurled themselves from the nearby rooftops, jump packs flaring in the smoky darkness, casting themselves like comets and artillery shells across the tortured skein of night.
Cthonian legionaries slammed into the midst of the Emperor’s Children, lashing out with chainswords, bolters flaring with sudden thunder. The III rallied swiftly, turning to repel the assault even as brothers fell in spurts of gore. Limbs tumbled free; an arm hurtled across the melee, slapping wetly against Eidolon’s armour, adding yet another stain.
He spun about and his hammer came up, blocking the frenzied attack of an assault captain, his armour scored with kill-marks. Coins and bones rattled against his plate before the lightning-wreathed hammer swept them off and away. Chains broke, wire flared to nothing in the annihilatory impact.
‘Is it worth it? Fighting us to be king of nothing?’ the other warrior spat, his helm still possessing the lupine markings that had defined its previous heraldry. He swayed away from Eidolon then surged forwards, chainsword scraping against the lord commander’s breastplate. Eidolon grunted as he staggered back, feeling the flutter of pain through his muscles.
Nothing! Nothing! Yet you could be so much more if you simply–
Eidolon snarled away the agonies and the imprecations.
Every strike and attack made him feel more as he had before his first death, reinvigorating him until action and impulse sang as one. Another Son of Horus interspersed himself between Eidolon and his master, snarling as he raised his boltgun in a futile display of loyalty. Eidolon spun the hammer about and swung it in a horizontal arc, obliterating the man at the waist. Shards of smoking vertebrae skittered off the captain and he bellowed his hate as he threw himself back against Eidolon once more.
Eidolon slid backwards, dodging left and right as the angry, reckless strikes hurtled towards him, seeking a clean kill. Eidolon lurched forward, close enough that he could read the braggadocious gang markings that practically screamed the man’s identity.
‘This is how you die, Naamand Ganynix, far from home and in futility. Slain by your superior.’ Eidolon tensed as the whirring teeth of Ganynix’s blade clawed at the haft of his hammer before driving him back. He chased the warrior across the burning rock of the dying world, through brothers in both colours. Eidolon hooted as he pursued him, blows searing through the air. Plate buckled and paint melted as Naamand Ganynix sought in vain to parry the Lord Commander Primus’ wrath.
He ducked another swipe and then drove his hammer up and into the warrior’s chestplate, doubling him over.
Eidolon forced one boot down onto Ganynix’s shattered chest and raised his pistol. The weapon clicked and whined in his grip, brimming with killing energy. There was a muted green flash of radiation as it bored its beam through him, cooking him from the inside out. Steam hissed from between the plates of his armour in a wet, stinking exhalation.
Others came onwards, weapons roaring, blades shining. Champions and heroes of the XVI Legion, come to sell their lives dearly. Onos Ginzi with his crackling power sword and Varaddon Domon bearing axe in hand.
Blade met metal in an eruption of sparks and lightning, like the discharge of some vast volcanic eruption. Blows rained down upon him, driving him back, scraping at the golden surface of the once noble weapon. Eidolon spat in their faces, at the impassive facades of their helms.
The flat of the axe blade caught him across the pauldron, driving him back in a concussive burst of force. Armour plating cracked. Blood ran down his flesh and forced its way out through the wounded ceramite.
Around them was a storm of shot. Heavier weapons had committed from the rear of both lines, Cthonian artillery hurling death from within the walls of the final fortress while the Emperor’s Children returned fire, picking the city apart with flame and steel.
Bodies and debris alike were crushed as two III Legion Fellblades, Phoenician’s Claw and Flame of Chemos, made their steady advance along a memorial avenue, smashing their way through artfully carved sarcophagi and cenotaph pillars. The grinding treads tore at the once beautiful earthworks and withered gardens, crushing forgotten corpses beneath their inexorable progress. The tanks were firing as they went, picking targets with a precision that defied their twisted metalwork and undulating hulls. Corpses had been hung from the sides or left to trail behind the war engines, tortured human bodies bound into close-gibbets, the metal biting into flesh and wedged between clenched teeth.
Plegua and his Kakophoni pushed up to join Eidolon, sonic weapons screaming into the greater symphony of the war, driving back their enemies with a wall of savage force. Ginzi and Domon staggered backwards, and Eidolon seized the advantage.
He lent his own psychosonic scream to the wailing gale, throwing himself forward, hammer sweeping the legs out from under Onos Ginzi. The Son of Horus’ blade flew from his hand and Eidolon strode over his broken body, even as one of the Kakophoni lumbered forward to deal the killing blow.
‘Beneath me,’ Eidolon spat. ‘My time and talents shall be spent elsewhere, against worthy prey.’ He nodded to Plegua. ‘Finish this rabble. Their master will provide the challenge I require.’
FOURTEEN
warpsong
Vocipheron winced as he blocked another strike, driving the Son of Horus back before ducking and sweeping his sabre through his opponent’s leg.
The other warrior went to the ground in a rush of blood and a flash of exposed bone, grunting as he tried to push himself back up. Vocipheron snarled, thrusting his other blade down and through the warrior’s neck guard, feeling it grinding along his spine as he finally ended him.
Blood streaked his armour, hot against the purple plate. He had lost count of the enemy he had personally dispatched, most of them mere line warriors. The worthy of the XVI were few and far between, their champions indisposed or already dead. A diluted showing.
He had expected better.
Of all the Legions beneath the Warmaster’s banner, it was Horus’ own who held that fascination.
There was an irony, he knew, in the relationship between the Emperor’s Children and the Luna Wolves, who had become the Sons of Horus. The former had learned at the latter’s feet, watching the growing bond between their primarchs. Fulgrim and Horus, pupil and mentor, guiding the juvenile III Legion towards maturity and excellence.
Vocipheron had often wondered how their philosophy had even been born there, let alone flourished. The Emperor’s Children had been mere foundlings, caught in the shadow of the Emperor’s first-found son. Striving for perfection while attached to the armies of the most admired. The most perfect son.
He turned aside another lazy blow. The air was hot, thick with ash and burning debris. Every strike seemed to move sluggishly in the kindling winds, pulled at by the sudden zephyrs that rose with their furnace stench. He could hear laughter on the wind, even through his helm. A whisper coiling at his soul, creeping up his spine. It flared every time he killed. Each blow that split armour and flesh, shedding blood and eliciting pain, made the presence stronger and more insistent.
The battle thrummed through the ornamental square he was currently traversing, the dead at his feet and the enemy ahead of him. He struck back. A head spun free. He weaved and pivoted, driving his blades into an exposed back, bearing the sea-green figure to the ground. The weapons rose and fell, cutting and hacking, spraying him with blood till he looked more like one of Angron’s broken berserkers.
Part of him wanted to dive forward, to rip the other warrior apart, devour him meat and marrow. Vocipheron gritted his teeth and forced his way onwards, vaulting over a toppled statue. He had lost track of Eidolon in the madness of the melee. If he found the Lord Commander Primus then perhaps he could outrun these impulses, the urges flooding him like some addled maniac. Like Malakris.
There were flashes of the other warrior, through the crowds and individual battles. Flares of colour and the ostentatious crackle of his claws. Gouging through whoever came his way, driving them to the ground with the same manic fury that had gripped Vocipheron. No, not the same.
Malakris and his men fought with an insane, furious intensity that made them beacons upon the field of battle. They burned with an unnatural light, as though reality was weeping around them, the immaterial bleeding through to catch upon the barbs and spurs of their armour. Again he laughed as he killed, like one of the Khan’s White Scars. The lunatic joy that coloured Malakris’ movements was anathema to Vocipheron, a cancerous outgrowth of their martial perfection.
Yet the temptation was there. As much as they cleaved to the idea of the pure aesthete, the swordsman-as-savant, there was the yearning to simply give in and yield to the Legion’s ascendant humours. His skin crawled. His hearts pounded. The all-consuming focus that had defined him was cracking, riven through with new sensations and fresher doubts.
He could finally hear the warp’s song. The way Malakris or Plegua or the Lord Commander Primus must.
More of the enemy were making themselves apparent now. Sons of Horus were flowing, their orders modified, their choler piqued, from the outer defence blocks and contracting lines of resistance, through the meagre remaining Tatricalan forces and on towards the III.
True and open warfare raged about them, bearing down upon them in a storm surge of sea green, dappled with mud, blood and ash.
Vocipheron watched towers torn apart around him, raining masonry down upon his men like burst seed pods. All forcing him to fight harder, to focus with absolute clarity on the individual battles that found him again and again.
His sword-arm was already wearying. He had killed so many. Blood soaked him, staining him red up to the elbows, whorled across his chestplate, coating the warped and ruined eagle.
As tanks began to fire below, his eyes were drawn up to a fresh comet, scarring the heavens like the sweep of a god’s sword. A ship was dying. Wounded, engines holed through, it tumbled towards the earth. He could see ghost-light dancing around its rear as the reactors detonated and the warp engines gave a final, spiteful spasm.
The world swam and shuddered, shifting before his gaze as claws raked their way across the canvas of the real. The savage joy clicked behind his eyes, at his back, all around him. It was as though he was back in the belly of the beast, assailed in the heart of the Wage of Sin.
And this time… he began to listen to the song’s twisted rhythm.
Malakris knew he had over-committed, but he did not care. Not now that the skies were burning and the true enemy had revealed themselves.
The Sons of Horus came at him in a tide, as though knowing they could not kill him alone. When bolt shells found his armour, it was a much more pleasant sensation than the weak offerings of the mortals. Malakris sprinted between burned-out Imperial Army transports, turning and throwing himself down an improvised corridor. He moved through a burning doorway and straight into a shattered medicae station.
The dead did not answer him, though sometimes, when he caught the eye of one of them, he could see them laughing. Silent and mocking, as if they knew that he would falter and die. Begging him to fall at the hands of the Sons of Horus.
They were always your enemies, the voice had whispered reassuringly. You did what was right. You took your fate by the throat. As all must. As we soon shall.
There were times when the lord commander’s admonishments fled his increasingly addled mind, and he could not remember that the voice was not his. That had mattered once. Now it was nothing more than another dull refrain, next to the call that spoke in his soul.
Rykan Bail kept trying to raise him, but the voice distorted in the vox, his ardent pleas melting away into so many enraptured screams. He blocked him out. Vocipheron’s clamour for attention or orders or support had faded alongside them.
He was too busy for that.
Malakris felt the world convulse around them and laughed, feeling the air shift with fiery certainty. He bounded up a set of ruined stairs, taking them three and then four at a time, leaping over gaps and rounding the corner. Upwards, the better to see the world as it died and was remade.
The enemy’s fire chased him. Bolt shells missed by mere degrees. Plasma bursts were a crawling fire at his back. His armour systems were howling in his ear, overloaded, ruptured in multiple places.
‘None of it matters,’ he growled. ‘There is only the moment.’
Only the moment, the voice agreed. Soon, very soon, you will have your chance to serve. All will serve.
And when Malakris emerged out onto the third floor and saw the roaring fire of the sky, blazing forever against the rising smoke and the harsh exchange of artillery and shot, he knew.
This was the beauty and the war he had been craving all along. Something sacred.
He threw himself off the edge, landing in the midst of the Sons of Horus who hunted him, robbing their heavy emplacements of their ability to fire. His claws were a blur of killing steel, blazing as they drove in through the gorget of a sergeant, bearing him down.
The enemy swarmed him. Daggers and swords bit against his armour. He felt an axe-blow scar across his reactor housing, and then spun about, taking the warrior’s hands in tribute.
From out of the ruins, Rykan Bail found him at last. More of Malakris’ bloody-handed monsters were with him. Opha Demaskos, from the assault cadres, hurtled through the air on flaming jet plumes, landing amidst the enemy and lashing out with twin hand axes. He sang as he killed, driving one Cthonian down and stamping on his throat, even as he pivoted to stave in another skull.
Aren’t they beautiful? They could be so much more.
Slick with blood, laughing with the sheer joy of the slaughter, feeling the dying ship above as it gouged into the world’s tormented soul, Malakris finally understood what it meant to surrender.
The vox was screaming, useless, awash with static and feedback that made his ears ache beautifully.
The howls of a dying world were amplified and exaggerated. All across the city the forces of the III Legion were riotous and untamed, rising to the challenge of the Sons of Horus with vicious aplomb. Vast funeral pyres of dead mortals had been set burning, where they had not been reduced to raw psychoactives.
