[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Read online

  After a pair of dense, deep percussions the gate was breached and the way into the Capitol was open.

  Lithe silhouettes moved languidly in the shadows within, shrouded partially by the resulting smoke from the explosion.

  For the first time, Ba’ken noticed a wound tract in Elysius’ power armour scored by the dark lance. A glancing blow—anything else would’ve killed him—but painful despite that. The Chaplain paid it no mind. Regarding the last of the xenos defenders, he was emphatic.

  “Bring them bolter and flame.” Vulkan’s name was on their lips as the Salamanders charged the breach and took the first real step towards the liberation of Ironlandings.

  Elysius had made his command post in one of the overseers’ offices. It was a large chamber, grey and hard like the world around it. The low, squat desk—wrought-iron and heavy—had stayed, whilst the rest of the furnishings had been removed. Whereas before yield logs and processor reports had covered the desk, spattered with their old master’s blood, maps and charts adorned it now. This was all that the Chaplain needed to prosecute his part of the fight on Geviox.

  Cleansing the bastion, even the running battle up the roadway to reach it, had been easier than anticipated. Enemy forces had been light and swiftly subdued. He believed in the strength of his Fire-born, that wasn’t the issue; he’d just expected sterner resistance.

  Brother Drukaar had fallen into a sus-an membrane coma. That was lamentable. At least L’sen was walking, if not speaking due to his garrotted throat. Any other injuries sustained, including those he’d suffered himself, were negligible. A vox-unit set up in one corner of the room crackled. ++…status of Ironlandings… is… secure?++

  “Yes, Captain Agatone. We sustained a single casualty and will need an Apothecary at this destination, but the South-East Capitol is ours,” the Chaplain answered.

  ++Praise Vulkan… send… Brother Emek… your location… Ferron Straits… still contested…++

  “Are there signs of a command echelon?” It was one of several facts bothering Elysius. They had yet to encounter any leader of the raiders, no slave-master or xenos lord.

  ++Negative++

  “I’m instructing elements of the Guard to this position. Their time is better spent holding the Capitol. Squads Lok, Clovius, Ek’bar and Ul’shan will redeploy to the Ferron Straits, as per your orders. Thunderhawk carriers are already en route.”

  ++Confirmed, Brother-Chaplain++

  “Ba’ken and Iagon will remain to secure the strong-point until I’m convinced we are not needed here.”

  There was a short pause presaging Agatone’s next question.

  ++Something concerning… Elysius?++

  “Nothing I can grasp at this time.”

  Agatone seemed to consider that for a moment before saying, ++In Vulkan’s name, then++

  “Unto the anvil, captain.”

  Elysius cut the vox-link and the chamber fell silent. Utterly focussed on a geographical chart that tracked the xenos troop movements, he forgot about the attendants in the room until one of them shuffled.

  “Dismissed,” the Chaplain snapped, sending his attendants and armour serfs scurrying away.

  “Inexplicable…” he muttered at the icons denoting the dark eldar.

  A fire was burning in the labour-yard below. Its glow, seeping through the dirty plastek window of the office’s south-facing wall, gave the chamber an eerie, orange cast. They’d found the last of the Capitol’s staff within its walls. They’d suffered badly before they’d died—playthings for the xenos. Elysius had ordered them gathered and burned. The firelight was the only source of illumination in the room. The rest of the lights, old gas-burning lanterns, had been doused.

  “My lord?” a voice uttered from the darkness.

  The address held an implicit question.

  “Not you, Ohm,” Elysius said to his brander-priest. “My flesh is in need of scarification.”

  “Shall I assist you with your battle-helm, lord?” Ohm shuffled forwards into the fiery glow spilling into the room from the labour-yard below.

  He wore black robes, befitting his station as a Chaplain’s brander. The rod he clasped in his thin fingers was also a guide staff. For Ohm was blind.

  Ever since Elysius had known him, it had been this way. The scars across his eyes suggested an old pain, a searing that left a dark band in its wake. It had not lessened Ohm’s skill with the branding iron. His craft was exemplary. As such, he had refused all optical augmentation.

  “Not yet, Ohm…” The Chaplain’s voice tailed off in a tired rasp. Certain he was alone, barring his brander-priest, Elysius leaned heavily on the wrought-iron desk and felt the pain in his flesh anew. The lance burn had hurt him, but he could crush that with willpower. It was another wound, an old itch really, that distracted him.

  “Here,” he added. “My fists…”

  Ohm reached out and helped the Chaplain remove his gauntlets, laying them flat on the desk with the utmost care and attention. Then he took the burden of Elysius’ left pauldron when he’d removed that too. A loud clang resonated around the room as Ohm set it down heavily on the metal.

  “My apologies, lord. My strength is not what it was.”

  “It’s all right, Ohm. You have strength enough yet for your duties to me.”

  A power fist hummed beneath where the armour had been. Its couplings and linking-brackets were exposed and vulnerable.

  “Step back,” said the Chaplain, and Ohm obeyed, affecting a low bow that dropped his cowl so it obscured his fire-ravaged visage.

  Taking care to twist his torso so the weapon was braced over the desk, Elysius then set to disengaging the wires, unfastening the brackets and couplings. Muttering a litany to placate the machine-spirits within the power fist, he unfastened the shoulder joint and the heavy weight left his body. Beneath it, the iron desk groaned.

  Exhaling his relief, Elysius massaged the scarred stump of his mutilated shoulder where the ork war-boss had severed his limb, where afterwards Brother Fugis had stitched and seared him closed. It was the Salamander’s last act as Apothecary. Something had happened to him on the mission to Scoria. They had spoken on it briefly, him and Elysius, but in the end Fugis had felt the Burning Walk was the only way to find spiritual peace again. Few returned from such a journey, and the Chaplain doubted they would see each other again.

  On the battlefield none would doubt the fire in Elysius’ heart. His words alone could burn the enemy down, but some suggested that away from the cauldron of war ice and not blood flowed in his veins.

  Such things were spoken of in whispers, but Elysius heard much. He did nothing to persuade his brothers otherwise. Detachment was useful in the execution of his duties. Intimidation and reputation often went far further than any chirurgeon-interrogator ever could. Xavier had taught him that.

  But that coldness he cultivated and encouraged ebbed at the thought of Fugis’ death. Elysius regretted not being able to turn him from the desperate path he had felt forced to take but respected his courage for treading it nonetheless.

  “Do you miss it, lord?” Ohm asked.

  Elysius ceased kneading the stump of flesh that had long since knitted and acquired a thick skein of scar tissue.

  “For a blind man, you see much.” The Chaplain smiled rarely but allowed himself a moment of humour then. Old memories of Fugis had blackened his mood, though, and the levity soon fled. “Not only the arm,” he confessed, struck by the irony of him as Chaplain unburdening his soul to a serf.

  “You do not feel whole without it?”

  “Do you feel whole without your eyes?”

  “As you say, lord, I see much. I do not miss them. I know my world. I see Nocturne in the tang of fire on my tongue, the heat upon my face, the ash upon the wind. It is vivid, lord.”

  “There is beauty in that. Ohm. This here,” Elysius said, running his hand reverently over the detached power fist, “is a thing of beauty, too. Master Argos fashioned it for me. And it is potent, Ohm.
With it I am stronger, my enemies are felled easier. And yet… there is a sense of loss, of disassociation with my own body.”

  There was a pause. Ohm let it stand, knowing he had no need to interject.

  After a few seconds’ introspection, Elysius clutched the mag-clamps on the front of his battle-helm. Without a word, Ohm stepped in and disengaged the locks around the back of the neck. The Chaplain had to stoop for the brander-priest to reach them.

  Not since being ordained by Xavier had anyone ever seen Elysius’ face. He often told himself it was the reason he still kept Ohm around, on account of the serf’s blindness, but the bond went deeper than that. Rumours abounded concerning disfigurement or that the Chaplain’s face and helm were one.

  Elysius allowed himself a shallow chuckle.

  The truth was far worse than any rumour or fiction invented by his battle-brothers.

  Venting pressure signalled the locking clamps were disengaged. He lifted the helm off with Ohm’s help, standing straight and then holding it with one hand.

  It was a mercy to be free of the death-mask. At times, it weighed heavily. Breathing in the unfiltered air, relishing its acerbity, Elysius turned the battle-helm around so the rictus was staring at him. It was important to appreciate the visage that his enemies and allies saw. It reminded him of who he was and his sacred charge.

  “Blindness must be a liberating disposition,” he muttered.

  A votive-servitor, a brander-priest’s constant companion in the field, clanked noisily into position from where it had been resting dormant at the back of the room. Ohm was intent on his work now. He thrust the dragon-headed iron into the deep brazier of white-hot coals pin-drilled to the servitor’s back.

  Elysius embraced the heat.

  No, he thought. Pain is liberating.

  As a veteran of many campaigns, hundreds of battles, the Chaplain’s deeds of scarification were written across much of his body already. Ohm went to work on the neck, Elysius opening and splitting his gorget to remove it so the brander-priest could sear the flesh beneath.

  The movements were slow and precise, a low hiss emanating from the super-heated rod as it dragged shallow furrows in the Salamander’s flesh.

  A few seconds and it was done, a muttered litany from Ohm and then echoed by Elysius completing the ritual.

  “In Vulkan’s name…” he breathed, closing his eyes and exhaling deeply.

  Ohm didn’t have chance to reply; another was standing at the threshold to the room.

  “Brother-Chaplain…” the voice came from the doorway, an armoured warrior in green waiting there patiently with his head bowed.

  Ordinarily it would be extremely disrespectful to interrupt another Fire-born’s solitude. Isolationism, be it on the field or in the Chapter’s solitoriums, was a sacred tenet of the Promethean Creed. Only brander-priests were permitted into that covenant. But Salamanders were also pragmatic—at times, covenants had to be broken. Judging by the warrior’s demeanour, which Elysius read immediately, this was such an occasion.

  “What is it, my son?” Elysius asked in an undertone, swallowed by darkness so only his silhouette was visible. Ohm, too, retreated into shadow.

  It was Brother-Sergeant Ek’bar. He carried his battle-helm in the crook of his arm and his eyes blazed in the gloom but the fire there was dull and tempered by grief.

  “I need you to perform the Rites of Immolation, Lord Chaplain,” Ek’bar’s voice was just above a whisper, “Brother Drukaar is dead.”

  Elysius paused, allowing the weight of purpose to return. “Ignite the pyre,” he said, “Brother Emek will be here soon. I will join you in the labour-yard shortly.”

  Sergeant Ek’bar bowed and was about to take his leave when he spoke up.

  “I served alongside him for ten years.”

  “Death and rebirth, sergeant—they are part of the Nocturnean circle of fire. Drukaar will return to the mountain, as will we all in the end. Take solace in that…” a snarl crept onto the Chaplain’s hidden face, “…and turn your grief to hate. Stoke that flame and unleash it upon our enemies.”

  Ek’bar only nodded. As he walked away, his slow and steady footfalls resounded through the metal steps leading to the floor below.

  Regarding the grinning rictus of the death mask, Elysius scowled. Staring into those hollow eye sockets, he didn’t like what he saw.

  Ba’ken met Iagon in the labour-yard. Most of the Fire-born who had fought at Ironlandings were there. Brother Emek, the Company Apothecary, was inbound. Captain Agatone and the rest of the Inferno Guard would not be joining them.

  The two sergeants were alone, standing apart from the others who mustered in small groups contemplating their fallen brother Drukaar whose body would soon be anointed by flame and whose ash would rejoin the earth.

  Iagon’s battle-plate was well chipped and scoured from his rearguard action a few hours earlier.

  “You should have your serfs attend to that,” said Ba’ken, though it went against his every instinct to bandy idle words with the other Salamander.

  Iagon scarcely glanced at the superficial damage, as if disinterested.

  Not to be dissuaded, Ba’ken lumbered on. “They are scars well earned, brother. You fought bravely with Sergeant Lok today.”

  Now a wry, if slightly perplexed, smile curled Iagon’s sneering lip. His eyes were cold as they regarded Ba’ken.

  “There has never been much accord between us, Sol. May I used your given name? So, I have to ask myself: why do you seek to ingratiate yourself into my confidence now?”

  “I merely offer camaraderie, Cerbius, as one Salamander to another.”

  “Because I defended your back on the road to the Capitol? Is it guilt that drives this overture or ego that you have misjudged me as a brother?”

  “Dak’ir was my sergeant and friend, you chose to ally—”

  “With a hero of our noble Chapter, a true Fire-born whose deeds have seen him elevated to the 1st Company.” Iagon spat out the last part. Ba’ken mistook whom his anger was directed at.

  “I merely wished—”

  “To assuage your conscience, I know.” Iagon’s eyes were cold like rubies, the sneer on his face lifeless. “You have great strength, Sol, and an easy camaraderie that earns you many friends and scar-brothers. I am Salamander, yes, but not like you. Guile and intelligence, a survivor’s determination—these are the traits I possess.”

  “We are still brothers, Cerbius.”

  “In name alone.” Iagon was about to turn away when he paused, showing his profile to the other Salamander, “but your words are noted, Sol. They are noted.”

  He walked away, craving the solitude of the dark.

  Ba’ken let him go.

  The sound of a Thunderhawk’s engines boomed overhead. In the labour-yard, a second pyre was lit. Its flickering light reflected off the armour of the Salamanders waiting to see Drukaar’s final moments with the Chapter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  Gathering Strength

  Pain-recressors bit into the flesh of his scar-ravaged face and Nihilan hissed. The barbs, administered by a grisly chirurgeon-servitor, went deep, right down to the nerves, but they eased the roaring fire there to a dull burning.

  It had been that way since Moribar, since the flame… and Ushorak…

  Hard images came back to him of that place often, of the grave world where he had changed from pupil to master, where he had been re-forged in crematoria fire. Sense memories pricked at his skin with hot needles for fingers, probing, burning. Then came the screaming, the last death shriek of a mentor who had become like a father he never knew.

  If Nihilan had been capable of tears, he would have shed them then. Instead, he massaged his anger, honed it into a tight blade.

  Soon … soon he would grip its haft and thrust it into the heart of his enemy, right to the hilt.

  Darkness surrounded him, leavened only by the visceral glow of sunken lamps. Vents in the floor exuded scudding stea
m from the enginarium decks, like the breath of some fell creature of myth. Wrapped in the shadows, Nihilan relished the peace and solitude they offered.

  Old habits, he thought with a bitter smile.

  It wouldn’t be dark and empty for long. Nihilan was expecting “guests”, hopeful supplicants and mercenaries who wanted to be party to his grand vengeance. As he dismissed the servitor-creatures, little more than a mesh of technology and bonded organs, an armoured figure emerged from the gloom.

  “How long have you been standing there, Ramlek?” Nihilan made his displeasure at being spied upon clear, even if Ramlek had not the wit for spying, the dutiful killing hound that he was.

  “I was waiting until your attendants had finished their rituals, my lord.” The armoured giant was clad in scaled ceramite the colour of fresh blood and spoke with the cadence of cracking magma. A sulphurous stench tainted the air with his every word and tiny flecks of cinder cascaded from the mouth-grille in his battle-helm. Oh yes, Ramlek was a killer through and through. His trappings attested to that.

  He was also ferociously loyal and bowed low before his master, causing his scales to shift and grate.

  “Arrivals?” asked Nihilan, shifting from the chair of dark iron which he had made his throne.

  “Many. Several ships have already docked with the Hellstalker.”

  The strike cruiser was Nihilan’s great pride. Wresting the vessel from its original owners had been a bitter but glorious victory for his Dragon Warriors. They were little but raiders then, scrapping pirates snapping at the heels of larger war dogs. How the years had changed that. After Ushorak’s death, oblivion stared them in the face and would have devoured them were it not for Nihilan and his obsessive belief.

  “Where are they now?”

  “The delegates wait beyond the chamber doors,” Ramlek replied, now standing straight and imposing. “Shall I admit them on your order or destroy them, my lord?”

  Nihilan smiled. The gesture pulled at the scar tissue marring most of his face.

  “What would be the point of enticing them aboard ship if we were just going to slay them, brother?”