CHAPTER TWO

Remembrance

‘What we do defines us. Our deeds are like shadows and depending on whether we run into or from the sun, they either lie behind us or before us.’

– ancient Terran philosopher, unknown

Kharaatan, during the Great Crusade

Smoke hung over Khar-tann City in a dark pall. It seemed to stick to its towers and battlements, drenching them in an oily gloom.

Fifteen hours of bombardment. Its shields had taken quite a battering. Parts of the city were demolished, but its main gates, its core walls and its defenders were still intact. Defiant. It was the first of nine major cities on One-Five-Four Six, or Kharaatan, as the natives called it.

Regarding the shadows that haunted its walls, its people unmoving as they watched the massive force sent to quell them, Numeon hoped the other cities would be easier to crack. He stood just over eight kilometres away on a rough escarpment of dolomitic limestone with three of his closest brothers. The Salamanders stood apart from the rest of the Imperial officers, who were farther back, camped halfway down a ridge that descended into a wide, low basin where their forces gathered.

‘It’s quiet,’ hissed Nemetor, as if to speak any louder would shatter the calm before the coming storm and pre-empt their attack.

‘Wouldn’t you be, facing off against the Legion?’ said Leodrakk. He looked up, craning his neck and pointing the snout of his dragon’s helm to the sky. ‘Two Legions,’ he corrected, though he could see no sign of their cousins.

Both warriors were Salamanders, yet could not be less alike. Nemetor was softly spoken and wore the emerald-green of the Legion, his iconography that of the 15th Company with a white drake head on his left shoulder guard. He was broad, with a thick neck and shortish, stout legs. Even out of his war-plate, he was formidable. It was partly the reason he was also known as ‘Tank’.

‘Perhaps they’re thinking about giving up, Tank,’ offered Atanarius, watching the city’s movements through a pair of magnoculars.

Like Leodrakk, he was armoured in the trappings of the Pyre Guard, a suit of plate fashioned in a draconian aspect with a reptilian battle-helm and scalloped greaves, pauldrons and cuirass. It was permanently blackened from Promethean ritual, and branding marks scored the metal in the Salamanders’ oaths of moment. Both warriors were taller than Nemetor, but lost ground in terms of sheer bulk.

‘Is that what your eyes tell you, Atanarius?’ Numeon asked in a deep voice. He turned, the fire-red crest jutting from the crown of his battle-helm marking him out as their captain. He was also the primarch’s equerry, and that made him unique. Even through his retinal lenses, his gaze was penetrating.

Over the Phatra plain where Khar-tann City presided, night was starting to fall. Like hot embers in a fire, Numeon’s eyes blazed in the pre-dark. All of the Salamanders’ eyes did. It was a part of their heritage, like the onyx black of their skin and the self-sacrificial mindset of their Promethean creed.

‘Even through the scopes, it’s hard to be certain of anything they are telling me, Pyre captain.’ Atanarius lowered the magnoculars, returning them to his equipment belt, before facing Numeon. ‘I can detect very little movement. If they were planning on trying to repel our forces, then whatever measures they mean to use to do it are already in place.’

‘Eight thousand fighting men, plus twice that number again in civilians, some of whom may have been levied to bolster the troops,’ said Leodrakk. ‘Nothing they can do will prevent us knocking down their gate and cleaning house.’ He sounded belligerent as ever. A hot vein of magma ran through his skin and bone, as was often remarked by his brothers.

Nemetor cocked his head. ‘I thought you were planning on burning down their house, not cleaning it, brother?’

Leodrakk glared, cracking his knuckles inside his gauntlets.

‘Temper, Leo,’ Atanarius warned, before turning to Nemetor, ‘but don’t think your familiarity with the Pyre Guard allows you to disrespect us, Nemetor. Even from a captain, that won’t be tolerated.’

Nemetor inclined his head to apologise.

‘If you are finished goading one another then please attend.’ Numeon nodded down the ridge where several Army officers were slogging uphill, ‘I believe we are about to get some news.’

Numeon opened up a vox-link in his battle-helm.

‘Skatar’var.’

A crackling voice answered immediately.

‘Summon Lord Vulkan,’ said Numeon. ‘The Army and Titan legio are ready to march.’

He cut the link, knowing the order was given, so would be carried out.

Below in the desert basin, the Legion waited. A sea of emerald-green, six thousand warriors stood ready to bring a city to its knees. Beyond them, four full regiments of tanks, including super-heavies, a squadron of Infernus-pattern Predators and enough Mastodons to transport every legionary on the ground. Behind the infantry loomed a trio of Warhound Titans from Legio Ignis, nicknamed the ‘Fire Kings’. Traditionally, Warhounds fought alone, but this particular pack was seldom parted.

Khar-tann City was formidable, its armed forces devoted, but it could not outlast this. There was something unsettling about the silence and the way the Khar-tans had given in wholly to alien subjugation.

Numeon snarled, feeling the old familiar call to war. It filled his vox-grille with the reek of ash and cinder from his heavy exhalations. In the end, their resistance mattered not.

‘It’s time to make them burn.’

Vulkan kneeled, head down, inside a cell of obsidian and black metal. What little light penetrated the darkness was from the forge-heat of irons and brands, the warm glow of embers surrounding a pit of coals.

The air was hot, stifling. Seriph was wearing a rebreather, and put questions to the primarch through a vox-coder attached to her belt. It made her otherwise mellifluous voice tinny and marred with static.

‘And so you were raised a blacksmith’s son?’ she asked, wiping away another bead of sweat from her brow, dark patches showing under the arms of her robes and down her back. The remembrancer took a moment to sip from a flask she wore at her hip. Without it, dehydration and acute heatstroke would have occurred in minutes. She wanted longer with the Lord of the Drakes, and if this was the only way then so be it.

‘Is that so hard to believe?’ Vulkan answered as the sound and smell of burning flesh – his flesh – filled the chamber. ‘And he was a blacksmiterand a metal-shaper, a craftsman of consummate skill that I greatly admired.’

A human, augmented to be able to perform his duty and live to do so again, withdrew a burning brand from the primarch’s skin.

‘Noted,’ said Seriph, scratching with her stylus on the data-slate in her other hand. ‘It just seems like a humble origin for a lord of Space Marines.’

The remembrancer was sweltering now, having endured a full twenty-one minutes in the primarch’s chambers, a feat none before her had matched without expiring from the heat.

‘Should I have had a more regal upbringing then?’

The brander picked up a fresh iron, examining the hooked end and imagining the shape of the mark it would make.

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ said Seriph, wincing as Vulkan’s flesh burned anew, sizzling like meat in a cook-pan. ‘I just assumed all the primarchs came from warlike, vaunted beginnings. Either that or born as orphans on death worlds.’

‘Nocturne isa death world and hardly civilised. But our origins were all very different. I wonder sometimes how we all came back to our father’s service as warriors and generals, but here we stand at the forefront of the Great Crusade doing just that.’

Seriph frowned, then wiped her brow with the sleeve of her robe.