[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Read online

  Agatone looked up from the map-slate at last and found the fiery glare of Elysius upon him. It was almost as if the Chaplain were measuring him. Agatone knew he was not the first to fall under that appraising stare. Nor would he be the last. Satisfied, Elysius continued.

  “The creatures will do as they will. We must prosecute our duty, bathe them in Nocturne’s fires until there is naught left but ash. They flee because they are weak. They use human shields because they are weak. They seek to confound us with obscure tactics because they are weak. We are strong, Captain Agatone. You are strong. Let that be how you are tested against Vulkan’s anvil.”

  Agatone bowed to the Chaplain’s wisdom, but was still hesitant. “It is not my resolve that I question, Lord Chaplain.”

  Elysius leaned back, allowing the shadows to gather about him again. The Chaplain had ever been a warrior of the dark. Much was unknown about him. His skull faceplate showed only uncompromising, painfully mortal bone. Ever since he had been inducted into the Chaplaincy by none other than Xavier, the Salamanders’ long-dead Reclusiarch, Elysius’ face and true identity had remained a mystery. It gave him power but also made him shrewd about the secrets of others.

  “Your bickering sergeants,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Legacy is a great and terrible thing. It can drive us to emulate and even exceed the great deeds of the past, but it can also debilitate and condemn us to repeat past mistakes. Let me lead our forces into Ironlandings,” he said. “The south-west, over by the Ferron Straits, also needs strong leadership.”

  Agatone was incredulous. “You’re suggesting I abandon my post here?”

  “Not abandon, merely relocate. I will observe Ba’ken and Iagon, and see if the root of acrimony can be excised.”

  “You will take the Capitol at Ironlandings yourself?”

  “Indeed. It does not require both of us. Faith in fire, brother-captain—remember that. Either our warring sergeants will be re-forged in it, their bond assured, or they will burn. It is the Promethean way.”

  Agatone nodded, but was reluctant.

  The Chaplain’s eyes widened as if seeing more than what was merely visible before him. Elysius was no Librarian. He did not possess witch-sight or the psychic gift. He did have incredible insight, however, instinct and subtlety to rival their Lord Tu’Shan.

  “You wish to confess something more, brother?”

  Agatone’s jaw clenched, a vein tensing in his cheek.

  “I do.”

  “Then speak.”

  “First Kadai, then N’keln. There is a feeling that the captaincy of the 3rd is a poison barb.”

  “I didn’t take you as one who believed in curses, captain. Superstition does not become you. Nor is it true to the Promethean Cult.”

  Agatone’s posture stiffened with barely restrained anger. “I don’t believe in curses. And I am not Kadai or N’keln—”

  “That is true,” Elysius agreed, interrupting. “You don’t, possess Kadai’s charisma, but you also do not suffer from N’keln’s doubts.” His penetrating gaze narrowed. The voice was cold from behind the mask. “In many ways, you are the Promethean ideal: pragmatic, unswerving, loyal. These are laudable traits for a son of Vulkan.”

  “Three years ago, I did not support my captain as I should have.” Agatone just came out with it, the long-harboured burden that he was constantly reminded of due to his position in the Chapter.

  Now, Elysius seemed profoundly interested. “And what should you have done, brother?”

  Agatone dipped his head at first but then raised his chin defiantly. “Spoken out against him. N’keln was not ready, and he died for it.”

  “You’re wrong. He was tested against the anvil. That’s all any of us can really ask for. It is Vulkan’s judgement, after all. Victory was won on Scoria, Captain Agatone, just as it will be won again on Geviox. Our brothers die—it is a fundamental fact of our existence. The 3rd has experienced more grief than most, but the blade that bears the brunt of the hammer’s wrath in the forge and does not break will be the hardest in the arsenal.”

  “What does not kill us makes us stronger?”

  The Chaplain’s intensity lessened. “If you want to employ an ancient Terran idiom, then yes, I suppose so.”

  Agatone paused, weighing up the wisdom of Elysius’ words.

  “I request a benediction, my lord…” he said at last.

  “To purge the misgivings clouding your soul,” the Chaplain asserted. “Kneel, Adrax Agatone. Vulkan’s eyes are upon you now.”

  The captain took a knee and Elysius drew forth the Sigil of Vulkan from his belt. It was a holy artefact, once a piece of their primarch’s armour and thus named for him. It resembled a hammer, an icon of the Chapter and symbolic echo of Nocturne’s atavistic heritage. Its purpose, besides being a venerated Chapter relic, was unknown. In solitude, Elysius had studied it often but despite many years of examination, even after consulting the Tome of Fire which contained all of their primarch’s wisdom and prophecy, was no closer to unlocking its secrets. For someone obsessed with truth, it was an infuriating conundrum.

  “Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast…” Elysius intoned.

  “With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,” Agatone concluded.

  The Chaplain drew the icon of the hammer with the Sigil in mid-air above the captain’s head.

  “Arise now, brother.”

  “In Vulkan’s name,” Agatone returned with renewed purpose, his mind already cast to the fresh field of war presented by the Ferron Straits.

  Elysius’ voice was little more than a rasp, his rictus visage disappearing into shadow.

  “May he watch over us all.”

  Ritual pyres burned along the horizon, throwing harsh light over the ruddy Geviox hills. It was a small world, barely five million souls, but rich in ferrous ore. Grey banks of iron dust streaked a landscape festooned with silos and towers. Cities were two-thirds factorums, inhabited by a predominant labour force population. But Geviox was no forge world; it had no allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was a processor-planet, where raw materials would be ground from its earth, its very lifeblood yoked until it was dry. Then the populace would move on, little more than labouring transients, to the next world in need of harvest.

  In the firelight, veins of rust brought about by the hot steam of the purifying-plants shimmered deep, visceral red. A metal tang infected the air, filtered through Iagon’s rebreather mask, reminiscent of blood.

  He trudged up the iron hill, loose earth scattering down in his wake where his heavy boots displaced it. A ritual pyre burned for him, too. Just like his brothers, he’d built it himself, lit it and returned once it reached its apex. Reaching the summit, he cast around and counted almost fifty towering flames. Every Salamander waging war come the dawn was anointing their armour for battle, locked in solitude and focussed on inner reliance.

  Iagon, however, was not alone. He saw his companion through the haze, a flickering outline obscured by flame and smoke.

  Sitting opposite, he eyed the silhouette warily. White ash was gathering at the base of the pyre, into which Iagon dipped the gauntleted fingers of his right hand. His gaze never leaving his silent companion, he proceeded to draw the icon of the flame upon his left vambrace then the serpent on his plastron.

  “Wrath and cunning,” he explained to the figure. The lambent light filled the crevices of his gaunt face, making it look hollow and dead. “I will have need of such traits come the dawn.”

  As if catching a gesture from his companion, Iagon regarded the sergeant’s iconography on his armour. “Ah yes…” he muttered in a thick drawl. “Your scraps, for which I am eternally grateful.”

  Like a snake snatching suddenly for prey, Iagon yanked off his left gauntlet and sent it tumbling across the ground. Beneath it, his fingers were made from wires and metal, plastek and servos. They whined and churned as he clenched them. Brandishing the augmetic hand at the figure, he spat, “But the sacrifi
ce does not seem to fit the reward, now does it!”

  Surging to his feet Iagon leapt through the ritual flame, a cry of anguish on his lips. He seized the figure on the other side, lifting it bodily into the air.

  “Betrayer!” he accused, casting his companion down into the pyre.

  “Liar!” He smashed his armoured boot down onto the figure’s torso. The flawed metal cracked and split immediately.

  “Burn, you bastard. Burn!” Again and again, Iagon drove his foot down upon the hollow armour suit, which broke and crumbled against his rage.

  His voice came between rasping breaths. “I trusted… you…”

  Mastering his composure, a cold detachment swept over the Salamander.

  The anger had come much more quickly this time. Iagon pondered what that meant, watching as the effigy he’d fashioned was slowly devoured by ritual fire. It resembled a sergeant’s battle armour, but some of the markings upon it were distinctive and unique. He wore different panoply now. He had snatched at it without thought for those who had toiled and sacrificed to bring it within his grasp.

  “Selfish dog… Your promises are like ash,” Iagon hissed, feeling the wrathful serpent retreat within him again, coiling around his cankerous heart. “I will not be discarded like some broken brander-priest,” he vowed, heading back down the hill. It overlooked a sparse landing field where a pair of Thunderhawk gun-ships and three transporters waited for the dawn. “Nor will I be consigned to obscurity, a footnote in your great destiny.”

  He bent down to retrieve his gauntlet—strange how after all these years he could still see blood on his hands, even the augmetic one—and replaced it with a savage twist.

  “My destiny is written too. Yours will be short, traitor.”

  “Brother?” The voice was deep, coming from the left. It was distant but as Iagon swung his gaze around he saw Ba’ken stomping towards him.

  A patina of ash coated the hulking Salamander’s armour. His slab-like face carried faint traceries of white.

  Iagon’s sour glance held a challenge. Despite his brother’s size, he wasn’t intimidated. Ba’ken had a warrior’s soul. Unlike Iagon, he didn’t possess a cold-blooded killer’s.

  “Who were you talking to?” Ba’ken asked, casting a wary eye towards the ritual pyre.

  Iagon’s expression was cold and lifeless.

  “The dead.”

  He stalked away without another word, leaving Ba’ken to wonder at the dwindling shadow inside Iagon’s ritual flame and what had transpired on the hill. He too noticed the landing field, where the Night Devils Valkyries and Chimera tanks had once idled, where now Astartes Rhino APCs were being made ready by a Techmarine and his coterie of mindless servitors. The pride of the 3rd Company armour, the Land Raider Fire Anvil, was anointed and ready. Ba’ken heard the slow-building fire of its machine-spirits as the engines were put through their final pre-battle routines.

  Come the dawn, they would mount up and travel on armoured tracks to the battlefront. Come the dawn, they would enter the fires of battle where all of Vulkan’s sons must be tested.

  It was as it always was, as it always had been on countless missions, during countless campaigns. Yet this time, for Ba’ken, it felt different. It felt wrong.

  II

  Strongpoint

  Ba’ken kept as low to the ground as his frame allowed. Overhead, shard-fire turned the air into a razor-filled haze.

  Reaching a partially destroyed emplacement strewn with dark eldar corpses, he snapped a pair of magnoculars to his eyes. He didn’t need them to see the assault was going well, but the additional magnification, combined with the genetic enhancement of his occulobe implants, revealed intricate detail.

  A broad field of flat terrain stretched before the Salamanders from the penultimate line of xenos earthworks. Spikes, wound tight with wire and hell-barbs, jutted from the ground at obscure angles. The dark eldar had also dug pits filled with corpse-bombs, human casualties packed with alien explosives. Brother Mulbakar had lost his hand and most of his forearm when he’d gone to the aid of one still twitching in the pits. After that, the Salamanders burned them.

  They were crude, cynical deterrents designed to sting and frustrate rather than actually impede to any great degree. Behind them, through a squall of rust-red ore dust, a firing line of dark eldar warriors shrieked and cursed at the Astartes. Through the lenses Ba’ken discerned every sweep and curve of the aliens’ segmented armour. Each barb, every blade, the grotesque daemonic mimicry of their coned helmets was made clear to him. The hated xenos. Ba’ken drank it all in and used it to fuel the fires of his wrath.

  He estimated approximately sixty-three xenos defending the immediate area outside the gate to the Capitol sector and Captain Agatone’s strongpoint. Of that garrison, five had heavy cannon. Though the xenos shard weaponry lacked the strength to penetrate power armour easily, the long lances in the firing nests were deadly.

  “Stay low,” he growled into the comm-feed fixed into his gorget. He stowed the magnoculars so he could replace his battle-helm. At once, the battlefield was drenched in a tactical-yellow film. Distances, dispositions, formations and geographical data swarmed across his retinal display, swallowed up by Ba’ken’s eidetic memory.

  The fire overhead was still thick, punctuated by arrowed blasts from the lance cannons that left the air hot and cleaved. Two squads including Ba’ken’s were poised to advance down the centre but not before the heavy cannon were neutralised.

  Blink-clicking a comm-rune on his retinal display, Ba’ken addressed a fellow sergeant.

  “Ek’bar…”

  The return came back fraught with static and the distant rumble of explosions. Sustained gunfire underpinned the cacophony of war in a raking drone.

  ++Advancing++

  “I need those lances taking out.”

  There was a short pause. More battle sounds filtered through. ++Momentarily, brother. You have the patience of Kalliman++

  A wry smile crept onto Ba’ken’s lips at the dryness of his fellow sergeant’s wit. Kalliman was an ancient Nocturnean philosopher who had once spent forty days and nights in isolation to better learn the virtue of stoicism. Ba’ken was in no doubt that Ek’bar had meant the remark ironically.

  On the left flank, the other sergeant made slow but certain progress, chewing up the dark-armoured xenos with strafing heavy bolter fire and well-timed grenade bursts. Ba’ken’s urging had lent him aggression, though. A huge plume of dirt and debris went up where one of the dark eldar’s cannon nests had been positioned. Ek’bar’s squad swarmed over it, chain-blades cutting, bolters barking. Two lances down.

  Clovius, granite-like and stocky, roamed the right flank. His troops were just as methodical, laying waste to the ravening skimmer-machines the xenos were attempting to use to deploy their warriors further into the Astartes ranks. The barb-like engines hovered via some depraved xenos anti-grav technology. It gave them manoeuvrability but the open-topped transports lacked armour and that made them vulnerable to sustained bolter fire.

  It was a weakness the single-minded Clovius exploited to the full. Exploding shrapnel shredded the air as the whining vehicles were torn apart. A smaller squadron of grav-bikers retreated in the wake of the larger machines’ destruction, howling and whooping. They circled the battlefield jeering and spitting threats, tantalisingly out of reach, before laughing and burning up the sky with their over-revved engines. With the swarm in full flight, Clovius was able to direct his attention to another gun nest, a well-aimed plasma beam reducing it to smoke and scorched metal.

  Behind him, Ba’ken felt the presence of Ul’shan and the ever-dependable Veteran Sergeant Lok as they pounded the Capitol’s outer gates with salvos from their Devastator squads. The heavy weapons had already cracked the walls. Bringing down the gate was only a matter of time.

  Here, in the long to middle ground, the Salamanders reigned supreme. The gun nests and artillery emplacements the dark eldar had erected were not meant to last for
long. They were not a static force. Grievously ill-equipped to hold territory—it was just as Ba’ken had asserted during the briefing.

  “This is nothing. A blooding at best. The cauldron awaits us behind those gates,” shouted Chaplain Elysius. It was as if he’d read the sergeant’s thoughts.

  The sudden change in command echelon had surprised Ba’ken, but as much devotion and loyalty as he had for his captain, serving under Elysius was always a stirring experience. The Chaplain’s zeal and fervour were contagious.

  “We are ready, Lord Chaplain,” said Iagon, coldly despatching a wounded xenos half-buried in the sundered emplacement. The dark eldar seemed to shudder with pleasure as it died. According to Imperial data concerning the aliens, they relished all forms of sensation, even the painful ones.

  “Aye, if the enemy are already half-slain,” muttered Ba’ken, unsure if he was more disgusted at the alien or his fellow battle-brother.

  He didn’t appreciate being so close to Iagon on the line—it was like having a bolt pistol pointed squarely at the back of his head all the time, but those had been Elysius’ orders. The dispositions were clear, and so too were the Chaplain’s methods. He was testing them both. Iagon had the wit to see it, too—Ba’ken suspected his fellow sergeant was a great deal cannier than he let on—and had performed exemplarily since the combat action had begun.

  “The wall breaks, my lord!” Brother Ionnes pointed to the gates as they collapsed under the Devastators’ incendiaries, throwing up clouds of dust and grit.

  Four of the five cannons were down.

  Elysius raised his crackling crozius mace into the air.

  “Into the fires of battle, brothers!”