She scratched at the Pyre Guard’s battle-plate and he looked as if he was about to forcibly remove her when a glance from his primarch stayed Numeon’s hand.
“It is only fear. We have seen it before.” Vulkan gently pulled the hysterical woman away from his equerry. Touched by the primarch’s aura she calmed enough for an Army trooper to take her away. A little farther away, a picter flashed as one of the remembrancers recorded the moment for posterity. “You.”
The man quailed as Vulkan addressed him. “M-my lord?”
“What is your name?”
“Glaivarzel, sire. Imagist and iterator.”
Vulkan nodded. “You will surrender your picter to the nearest discipline-master.”
“S-sire?”
“No one must see that we are saviours, Glaivarzel. The Emperor needs us to be warriors, to be death incarnate. To be anything less would endanger the Crusade and my Legion. Do you understand?”
The remembrancer nodded slowly and gave his picter to one of the Phaerian discipline-masters who had overheard the exchange.
“When this war is done, you have my sanction to come and speak with me. I will tell of my life and the coming of the father. Will that be sufficient recompense for the loss of your images?”
Glaivarzel nodded then bowed. For an iterator, he had abruptly lost the ability of speech. When he’d been ushered away, Vulkan turned back to Numeon.
“I have seen fear,” he told him. “On Nocturne, when the earth split and the sky cried tears of fire. That was real fear.” He swept his gaze across the tribespeople as they were slowly moved away. “I should see suffering.” His face became hard and unyielding. “But how can I feel compassion for a race whose hardships do not nearly compare to those endured by my own people?”
Nonplussed, and for want of something better to say Numeon replied, “I am not from Nocturne.”
Vulkan turned from the disappearing refugees. A sigh escaped his lips in what might have been an expression of regret. “I know… So show me then, Numeon, how are we to liberate this world and ensure its compliance despite the feelings of our brother Legions?”
A GRUFF AND belligerent voice provided narration to a sweeping hololithic image of a desert continent. Clutches of hard grassland and spiked vegetation were scattered across the sparse landscape. Overhead, the glare of a forbidding sun bleached the sand white. Monuments and domes made of baked brick rose up out of the dunes. A cluster of these structures encircled a massive menhir sunk into a natural depression. Here the sweeping image stopped and magnified. Runes described the outer surface of the menhir, which was smooth and alien in design. Faintly glowing crystals, akin to giant oval rubies, were set at precise intervals and interlinked by swirling knot lines emanating from, and interwoven within, the core runes.
“The aliens draw their psychic power from these nodes.”
The image blinked out and a hololith of the Tenth primarch replaced it.
Ferrus Manus was a metal giant clad in jet-black power armour. His homeworld of Medusa was an icy wasteland echoed in the chilling silver of his pupil-less eyes and the glacial coldness of his knife-scraped flesh. Vulkan’s brother went unhooded, displaying defiantly a battle-worn face framed by black hair that was closely-cropped to his scalp. Ferrus was a furnace constantly stoked; his anger was quick to rise and slow to abate. He was also called “the Gorgon”, allegedly on account of his steely glare that could petrify those it fell upon. A less fanciful explanation arose from his planet’s namesake and a tie to a Terran legend of ancient Mykenaea.
“Our augurs have detected three such nodes in existence across the surface of One-Five-Four Four on the desert, ice plain and jungle continents—”
A low and hollow voice interrupted. “Our mission is known to us, brother. We have no need of reiteration.”
A second primarch entered the war council and stood alongside Ferrus Manus, although the two were many leagues apart at opposite ends of the planet. It was a strange juxtaposition, one wrapped by arctic blizzards, the other bathed in the glow of a fiery sun. Mortarion of the Death Guard was tall and thin but his presence, even via hololith, was undeniable.
“What I want to know is why we three are here to take this world, three Legions attached to the same expeditionary fleet—what makes it worthy of my attention?”
The self-proclaimed Death Lord had a grim aspect. His gaunt, almost skeletal features were reminiscent of a mythic figure recalled from archaic lore. He was the reaper of souls, the harvester of the dead, the thing that all men dread as it comes to claim them in the night hours, shrouded by a funereal cloak as grey and ephemeral as life’s final breath. Mortarion was all of these things and more. While the Night Lords employed fear as a weapon, he wasfear incarnate.
Ashen, glabrous skin was suggested behind the grille that masked the lower half of his face. A cloud of vaporous gas encircled his head in a pallid miasma, the captured fumes of lethal Barbarus, and was exuded from the confines of his stark war panoply. Shining brass and naked steel clad his form. Much of the detail was obscured by the flowing grey cloak that pooled voluminously over Mortarion’s angular shoulders like smoke, but a pitiless skull was still visible upon the breastplate. Poison censers ringed his towering form like a bandolier of grenades. Like his armour, these too carried the caustic air of the primarch’s homeworld.
Vulkan stooped to grasp a fistful of earth. Brandishing it to the other primarchs, he allowed the soft loamy soil to drain through his gauntleted fingers.
“Earth,” he uttered simply. “There is a seam of valuable ore, gemstones too numerous to count beneath its surface. I taste it in the air and feel it under my feet. If we force compliance of One-Five-Four Four quickly we can preserve it. A protracted war would see any potential geological bounty significantly reduced. That is why, brother.”
Ferrus spoke up, the irritation in his voice obvious, “And it is why the nodes must be tackled simultaneously and upon my order.”
A tired sigh rasped from the Death Lord’s lips. “This posturing wastes valuable time. The Fourteenth must cover more ground than their fellow Legions.” Mortarion unclasped his mouth grille to grin at the Gorgon. It was at once a mirthless and forbidding gesture, not unlike the rictus mouth of a skull. “And besides, Vulkan and I know who is in command. There is no need to feel threatened, Ferrus.”
Fraternal rivalry existed between all the primarchs. It was a natural consequence of their shared genetic origins but the Iron Hand and the Death Guard felt it more keenly than most. Each prided himself on his Legion’s endurance but while one looked to steel and machinery to overcome weakness, the other valued a more innate and biological resilience. As of yet, the virtues of both remained untested against one another.
Ferrus folded his arms, silver like flowing mercury, but did not bite at the obvious lure. “Is your task over-difficult, brother? I had thought the natives of Barbarus to be of sterner stock.”
Mortarion’s eyes narrowed and his grip on his massive scythe tightened. “The Legion leaves death in its wake, brother! Come to the ice fields and see for yourself how war should be conducted.”
Unable to cool his molten core any longer, Ferrus snapped. “Your ravages are already known to me, Mortarion. We must leave some of this world intact if it is to be of use afterwards. You and your kind may thrive in a toxic waste but the settlers who follow us will not.”
“ Mykind? Your own Legion’s progress is as slow and flawed as the machines they covet. What of the desert, is it won?”
“It is intact. Any warmonger with Legiones Astartes at his call can unleash destruction, but your tactics are extreme. One-Five-Four Four will not become a barren, lifeless rock under my charge.”