Hammer and Bolter 5 Read online

  Out front strode Idriss Krendl, the new Warsmith of the 14th Grand Company. The intensity of his Olympian glower was shattered by the scarring that cut up his face. Following, clad in the crimson robes of the Adeptus Mechanicum, was an adept, whose own face was lost to the darkness of his hood. A sickly yellow light emanated from three bionic oculars that rotated like the objective lenses of a microscope. Beside him was a Son of Horus. The eyes on his shoulderplate and chest were unmistakable and his fine armour was of the palest green, framed in a midnight trim. His unsmiling face was swarthy and heavy of brow, as though in constant deliberation. Flanking them, and marching in time, were Krendl’s honour guard: a four-point escort of Legiones Astartes veterans in gleaming, grey Mark-IV Maximus suits lined in gold and gaudiness.

  ‘Warsmith,’ Krendl greeted his former master coolly, at the foot of the altar steps.

  A moment passed under the engraved eyes of the Emperor.

  ‘Krendl,’ Dantioch replied.

  The Iron Warrior pursed his mangled lips but let the failure to acknowledge his new rank pass. ‘Greetings from the 51st Expedition. May I introduce Adept Grachuss and Captain Hasdrubal Serapis of the Sons of Horus.’

  Dantioch failed to acknowledge them also. The Warsmith gave a short cough and waved a gauntlet nonchalantly behind him.

  ‘You know my people,’ Dantioch said. Then added, ‘and yours.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Krendl said, raising a ragged eyebrow. ‘We bring you new orders from your primarch and your Warmaster.’

  ‘And what of the Emperor’s orders? You bring nothing across the stars from him?’ Dantioch asked.

  Krendl stiffened, then seemed to relax. He gave Serapis a glance over his armoured shoulder but the captain’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘It has long been the Emperor’s wish that his favoured sons – under the supreme leadership of his most favoured, Horus Lupercal – guide the Great Crusade to its inevitable conclusion. Out here, amongst a cosmos conquered, the Warmaster’s word is law. Dantioch, you know this.’

  ‘Out here, in the darkness of the East, we hear disturbing rumours of this cosmos conquered and the dangers of the direction it is taking,’ Dantioch hissed. ‘Rector, come forth. You may speak.’

  The cleric in sapphire and gold stepped forwards with apologetic hesitation. ‘This man,’ Dantioch explained, ‘has come to us from Greater Damantyne with grave news.’

  The priest, at once scrutinised by the supermen, retreated into the depths of his hood. He fumbled his first words, before gaining his confidence.

  ‘My lords, I am your humble servant,’ the rector began. ‘This system is the terminus of a little-known trade route. Merchants and pirates, both alien and human, run wares between our hinterspace and the galactic core. In the last few months they have brought terrible news of consequence to the Emperor’s Angels here on Lesser Damantyne. A civil war that burns across the Imperium, the loss of entire Legions of Space Marines and the unthinkable – a son of the Emperor slain! This tragic intelligence alone would have been enough to bring me here: the Space Marines of this rock have long been our friends and allies in the battle with the green invader. Then, a dread piece of cognisance came to my ears and made them bleed for my Iron Warrior overlords. Olympia – their home world – the victim of rebellion and retribution. A planet razed to its rocky foundations; mountains aflame and a people enthralled. Olympia, I am heartbroken to report, is now no more than an underworld of chain and darkness, buried in rotten bodies and shame.’

  ‘I have heard enough of this,’ Serapis warned.

  Krendl turned on the Warsmith. ‘Your primarch–’

  Dantioch cut him off. ‘My primarch – I suspect – had a hand in these reported tragedies.’

  ‘You waste our time, Dantioch,’ Krendl said, his torn lips snarling around the hard consonants of the Warsmith’s name. ‘You and your men have been reassigned. Your custodianship here is ended. Your primarch and the Iron Warriors Legion fight for Horus Lupercal now and all available troops and resources – including those formally under your superintendence – are required for the Warmaster’s march on ancient Terra.’

  The Grand Reclusiam echoed with Krendl’s fierce honesty. For a moment nobody spoke, the shock of hearing such bold heresy in a holy place overwhelming the chamber.

  ‘End this madness!’ Chaplain Zhnev implored from the steps, the forge light flashing off his sable-silver plate.

  ‘Krendl, think about what you’re doing,’ Tarrasch added.

  ‘I am Warsmith now, Captain Tarrasch!’ Krendl exploded, ‘whatever rank you might hold in this benighted place, you will honour me with my rightful title.’

  ‘Honour what?’ Dantioch said. ‘The rewards of failure? You command simply because you lack the courage to be loyal.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about failure and lack of courage, Dantioch. You excel in both,’ Krendl spat. He bobbed his head at Serapis, the splinters of frag still embedded in his face-flesh glinting in the chamber light. ‘That is how the great Barabas Dantioch came to be left guarding such a worthless deadrock. Lord Perturabo’s favourite here came to lose Krak Fiorina, Stratopolae and the fortress world of Gholghis to the Vulpa Straits hrud migration.’

  As Krendl growled his narrative, Dantioch remembered the last, dark days on Gholghis. The hrud xenos filth. The infestation of the unseen. The waiting and the dying, as Dantioch’s garrison turned to dust and bones, their armour rusting, bolters jamming and fortress crumbling about them. Only then, after the intense entropic field created by the migratory hrud swarms had aged stone and flesh to ruin, did the rachidian beasts creep out of every nook and crevice to attack, stabbing and slicing with their venomous claws.

  Most of all, Dantioch remembered waiting for the Stormbird to lift the survivors out of the remains of Gholghis: Sergeant Zolan, Vastopol the warrior-poet and Techmarine Tavarre. Zolan’s hearts stopped beating aboard the Stormbird, minutes after extraction. Tavarre died of old age in the cruiser infirmary, just before reaching Lesser Damantyne. Vastopol and the Warsmith had considered themselves comparatively fortunate but both had been left crippled with their aged, superhuman bodies.

  ‘He then thought it wise,’ Krendl continued with acidic disdain, ‘to question his primarch’s prosecution of the hrud extermination campaign. No doubt as a way to excuse his loss of half a Grand Company, rather than laying the blame where it really belonged: the Emperor’s bungled attempt at galactic conquest and his own failed part in that. The IV Legion spread out across the stars. A myriad of tiny garrisons holding a tattered Compliance together in the wake of a blind Crusade. Our once proud Iron Warriors, reduced to planetary turnkeys.’

  ‘The primarch was wrong,’ Dantioch said, shaking his iron mask. ‘The extermination campaign prompted the migration rather than ending it. Perturabo claims the hrud cleansed from the galaxy but, if that is the case, what is quietly wiping out Compliance worlds on the Koranado Drift?’

  The new Warsmith ignored him.

  ‘You disappoint and disgust him,’ Krendl told Dantioch. ‘Your own primarch. Your weakness offends him. Your vulnerability is an affront to his genetic heritage. We all have scars but it is you he cannot bear to look upon. Is that why you adopted the mask?’ Krendl smiled his derision. ‘Pathetic. You’re an insult to nature and the laws that govern the galaxy: the strong survive; the feeble die away. Why did you not crawl off and die, Dantioch? Why hang on, haunting the rest of us like a bad memory?’

  ‘If I’m so objectionable, what is it that you and the primarch want with me?’

  ‘Nothing, cripple. I doubt you would live long enough to reach the rendezvous. Perturabo demands his Iron Warriors – all his true sons – for the Warmaster’s offensive. Horus will take us to the very walls of the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor’s fanciful fortifications will be put to the test of our mettle and history will be made.’

  ‘The Emperor has long grown distracted in his studies on ancient Terra,’ Hasdrubal Serapis insisted with ven
om. ‘The Imperium has no need of the councils, polity and bureaucracy he has created in his reclusion. We need leadership: a Great Crusade of meaning and purpose. The Emperor is no longer worthy to guide humanity in the next stage of its natural dominion over the galaxy. His son, Horus Lupercal, has proved himself worthy of the task.’

  ‘Warsmith Krendl,’ Zhnev said, blanking out the Son of Horus and taking several dangerous steps forwards. ‘If you stand by and do nothing, while the Warmaster plots patricide and pours poison in his brother primarch’s ears, then you too plot a patricide of your own. Perturabo is our primarch. We must make our noble lord see the error of his judgement – not reinforce it with our unquestioned compliance.’

  ‘Lord Perturabo is your primarch, indeed. Is it so difficult to obey your primarch’s order?’ Serapis marvelled at the Iron Warriors. ‘Or does mutinous Olympian blood still burn in your veins? Krendl, to have your home world rebel in your absence is embarrassment enough. I trust you will not allow the same to happen amongst members of your own Legion.’

  ‘Save it, pontificator,’ Krendl snapped at the Chaplain. ‘I have heard the arguments. Soon the Legion will have little use for you and your kind.’ The Warsmith turned on the silent, seething Dantioch. ‘You will surrender command of this fortress and troops to me immediately.’

  A moment of cool fury passed between the two Iron Warriors.

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Then you and your men will be treated as traitors to the primarch and his Warmaster,’ Krendl promised.

  ‘Like you and your Cthonian friend are to his majesty, the Emperor?’

  ‘Your stronghold will be pounded to dust and traitors with it,’ Krendl told him.

  Dantioch turned and presented the grim iron of his masked face to Colonel Kruishank, Chaplain Zhnev and his Iron Palatine, Zygmund Tarrasch. Their faces were equally grim. Allowing his eyes to linger for a second on the visiting rector, Barabas Dantioch returned his gaze to his maniacal opposite. Krendl was flushed with fear and fire. Serapis merely watched: a distant observer – the puppet master with strings of his own. Adept Grachuss gurgled rhythmically and rotated his tri-ocular, the lens zeroing in on Dantioch. The Warsmith’s honour guard stood as statues: their bolters ready; their barrels on the custodians of the Schadenhold.

  ‘Vastopol,’ Dantioch called. ‘What do you think?’

  A vox-roar boomed around the chamber, causing the iron rods suspended above the Reclusiam to tremble and dance. Something large and ungainly moved amongst the giant, iron sculptures of the aisle diorama. The most primitive of preservation instincts caused Krendl and his honour guard to spin around in shock. One of the sculptures had come to life. Seeming small in the choreographed throng of titan attackers, the assailant’s bulk and breadth swiftly grew as it advanced and towered over the astounded Iron Warriors.

  The Legiones Astartes were presented with one of their own. A Dreadnought. A brooding, metal monster, as broad as it was tall and squatset with chunky weaponry. The Venerable Vastopol: with his Warsmith, the last surviving Iron Warriors of the Gholghis fortress world. Wracked with horrendous injury and premature age, Dantioch had had the Space Marine entombed in Dreadnought armour, so that the warrior might continue to serve and keep the chronicles of the company alive. The war machine had been hastily sprayed black in order to blend in with the surrounding diorama and with movement the fresh paint left a black drizzle behind the beast.

  As the wall of ceramite and adamantium came at them, Krendl’s armed escorts tried to bring their bolters to bear. The Venerable Vastopol’s gaping twin-autocannons were already loaded, primed and aimed right at them. The weapons crashed, chugging explosive fire at the two rearguard Space Marines and filling the chamber with the unbearable cacophony of battle. At such close range, the heavy weapon reduced the two Legiones Astartes to thrashing blurs of blood and shattered armour.

  With more grace and coordination than would have been thought possible in the hulking machine, the charging Dreadnought turned and smashed a third Iron Warrior guard into the opposite aisle with a power claw-appendaged shoulder. The Space Marine’s glorious Maximus suit crumpled and the Legiones Astartes within could be heard screaming as bones snapped and organs ruptured. With Krendl and Serapis backing for cover, silent pistols drawn, and the Mechanicum adept knocked to the Reclusiam floor, the Warsmith’s remaining honour guard flung himself at the Dreadnought. Lifting his bolter above his head, the Iron Warrior blasted the Venerable Vastopol’s armoured womb-tomb with firepower.

  Sparks showered from the Dreadnought’s adamantium shell. Vastopol gunned the chainfist bayonet that underslung his autocannons. Slashing at the Iron Warrior with the barbed nightmare, the war machine chewed up the Space Marine’s weapon before opening up his armour from the jaw to the navel. With chest cavity and abdomen spilling their contents out through the ragged gash, the honour guard dropped to his knees and died. Having come away from the wall of sculpture, the Dreadnought had allowed the crushed Legiones Astartes he’d pinned to the merciless iron to thunk to the ground. Lifting a huge metal foot, Vastopol stamped down on the Iron Warrior’s helmet, bespattering the polished stone with brain matter and putting the mauled Space marine out of his howling misery.

  As Dantioch came forwards, flanked by Tarrasch and Zhnev on one side and the rector and colonel on the other, Krendl and the Son of Horus retreated: the rage and horror evident on their contorted faces. Both Legiones Astartes officers were backing step by step towards the Grand Reclusiam entrance, their pistols aimed at the unarmed Warsmith and his heavily-armed Dreadnought. Krendl and Serapis were politicians, however, and knew that their best chance of escaping the fortress alive lay in their threats rather than their pistols.

  The Venerable Vastopol plucked Grachuss from the floor with the chisel-point digits of his power claw, holding the Mechanicum adept by the temples and hooded crown like an infant’s doll. The sickly yellow lens of the tech-priest’s tri-ocular revolved in panic while his respiratory pipes bubbled furiously.

  ‘I fear Warsmith Krendl brought you with instructions to catalogue our fortifications,’ Dantioch addressed the suspended Grachuss, ‘so that you might return with stories of our siege capability. A greater Warsmith than he would have done that himself, of course. Vastopol here was the chronicler for our company: he’s not much of a talker now. Vastopol,’ Dantioch called. ‘How does Adept Grachuss’s story end?’

  The Dreadnought’s power claw attachment began to revolve at the wrist, wrenching the tech-priest’s hooded head clean from his spinning shoulders. His body struck the altar steps, a cocktail of blood and ichor pumping from the ragged neck stump.

  ‘Insanity!’ Krendl bawled at the advancing Dantioch. ‘You’re dead!’ The threats had begun.

  ‘Captain Krendl,’ Dantioch hissed. ‘This is an Iron Warrior stronghold. It does not, nor will it ever serve the renegade Warmaster. My garrison and I are loyal to the Emperor: we will not share in your damnation.’ The cold pride that afflicted the Legion, as well as their Iron father, glinted in Dantioch’s cloudy eyes. ‘It seems I have one last opportunity to prove my worthiness to the primarch. I will not fail him this time. The Schadenhold will never fall. Do you hear me, Idriss? This stronghold and the men that defend it will never be yours. The Iron Warriors on Lesser Damantyne fight for their Emperor and they fight for me. You will taste failure and it will be your turn to return to the primarch’s wrath. Now run, you cur. Back to your renegade fleet and take this heretic dog with you.’

  Stepping back through the archway of the Grand Reclusiam with a wary Serapis, the wide-eyed Krendl thrust his pistol behind him and then back at the Iron Warriors and their Dreadnought.

  ‘All of this,’ Krendl waved the muzzle of the bolt pistol around, ‘dust in a day. You hear, Dantioch? Dust in a day!’

  ‘I dare you to try,’ Dantioch roared, but his challenge dissolved into raucous coughing. As the Warsmith fell to his armoured knees with wheezing exertion, Tarrasch grabbed Dantioch’s arm.
Patting the Iron Palatine’s ceramite, the Warsmith caught his breath. Tarrasch let him go but the exhausted Iron Warrior commander remained kneeling and head bowed. Slowly he turned to the hooded rector.

  ‘So,’ the cleric said, ‘you hear it for yourself: straight from traitor lips. Our brothers’ hearts steeped in warped treason.’ The rector reached inside the rich material of his robes. The soft whine of the displacer field – all but imperceptible before – died down through the frequencies, unmasking the priest and revealing his true dimensions. As the cleric lowered his hood the reality about the huge figure fell out of focus for a moment before reassuming a searing clarity.

  Their minds unclouded, the Schadenholders beheld a brother Space Marine: his ornate plate of the deepest blue. He held a plumed helmet under one arm and an ornate gladius sat in a sheath across his thigh. His surcoat robes hung from the resplendent flourishes of his artificer armour, with battle honours and commendations dripping from his glorious plate. The symbol on his right shoulder identified him as an Ultramarine; the bejewelled Crux Aureas crafted into his left as Legionary Champion, Tetrarch of Ultramar and Honour Guard to Roboute Guilliman himself.

  ‘You played your part well, Tetrarch Nicodemus. Are the Ultramarines usually given to such theatricality?’ Dantioch asked.

  ‘No, my lord. We are not,’ the champion answered, his cropped hair and fair patrician looks the mark of Ultramar’s warrior elite. ‘But these are uncommon times and they call for tactics uncommon.’

  ‘Let me be candid, Ultramarine. When you arrived on Lesser Damantyne with your slurs and distant intelligence, I almost had Vastopol blow you from the Schadenhold’s battlements.’ The Warsmith came up from his knees, once again with the help of Tarrasch. The Tetrarch shot him hard eyes: one of which was encircled by a neat tattoo of his chapter symbol.

  ‘It is not easy for an Iron Warrior to hear of his brothers’ weakness,’ Dantioch continued. ‘In that, even Idriss Krendl and I agree. You slandered my father primarch and besmirched the IV Legion with accusations of rebellion, heresy and murder. We’ve allowed your insults to go unpunished; you’ve allowed us the luxury of hearing kindred treason first hand. Our accord is sealed in truth. What now would Roboute Guilliman have of us?’