Legends of the wolf the.., p.89
Legends of the Wolf: The Omnibus, page 89
‘If that had been the end of the matter,’ Orquemond said, ‘he’d have lost his reputation, nothing more. After three weeks of intense conflict, during which the assets of the Church sustained terrible damage, he made his escape. And after that, if you believe the official histories, he left the Ecclesiarchy altogether, forfeiting his position and privileges, a wiser yet much weaker man.’
‘Clearly, though, that was a lie.’
Orquemond gave him a sly look. ‘They say he’s operated within the Church’s structures ever since. That was why it took so long for us to find him. Most of those who still took his order never knew his history. They saw the cardinal’s badge on the vellum, and did what it told them. Even once we began to investigate him ourselves, we ran into the sand at every turn – no names were ever given, no chain of command. Operatives didn’t know the names or ranks of those they reported to, only the destination for their material. Even when faced with the instruments, they would insist on that ignorance. No one ever said that Chirastes was a simpleton. Only that he was a maniac.’
Klaive began to feel even more uncomfortable. That was exactly how it had been. The orders had come down from on high, using all the right passcodes and verification seals. No names, no details. It was why he had been of so little use to the Wolves, at least at the start of his captivity.
‘To what end, though?’ he asked. ‘All this?’
‘Continuing his war,’ said Orquemond. ‘Doing by stealth what he could no longer do openly. It has been taking place for decades, under our noses, under their noses. Indeed, if they ever learned what has happened, make no mistake – all our throats would be liable for the axe-edge.’
‘But, my lord… the Wolves. They are undeniably… extreme.’
‘Maybe so. I have no love for Space Marines myself, of any breed. But they are the Emperor’s creations, sanctified in the holy canon, and it does not fall to any one of us to undo what He has created. Fenris may be a haunt of monsters beyond reason for all I know, but unless we are given lawful instruction from the Throneworld itself, sanctified and examined by the highest authority, its denizens cannot be touched.’
‘Then how did you find all this out?’
Orquemond raised his eyebrows ironically. ‘With difficulty. Tracks had been covered well. The few static installations his cabal controlled were emptied even as we discovered news of their existence. As the current war grew worse, he must have sent out hundreds of his people, scouring it all, burning the order-trails, working hard lest the confusion of battle unearthed what he had worked to keep secret. But he was commanding entire armies, confessor. Even in an Imperium as vast as ours, even with so many eyes elsewhere, that was always going to be hard to conceal.’
Klaive felt another pang of unease. He had been one of those agents. His orders on Ras Shakeh had been just those – to destroy the identified archives before they were taken by either the enemy or the Imperials. He’d never even known what was in them, just that they had to go. You didn’t ask questions, in his position – that was the surest route to danger. Still, hearing it all laid out like that, it was hard to not feel foolish. Even guilty.
He was about to ask more, pushing his luck as far as it would go, when reports from the bridge operatives started to filter back in numbers. Orquemond held up a hand, silencing him, and listened carefully. As he did so, orders were shouted down the long crew-trenches, and several of the cowled counsellors bowed low before hurrying away to new taskings.
‘What is happening?’ Klaive asked, mostly to himself, but Orquemond glanced at him a final time before heading back towards the command throne.
‘I am afraid that we are out of time, confessor,’ the cardinal said, his voice heavy with disappointment. ‘My troops on the surface advise that resistance has been stronger than hoped, and that they are now under attack from elements of the enemy. It will either take more time to bring him in, or more landings, neither of which I am prepared to countenance.’
He climbed the low steps before settling himself in the throne, his hands falling across the control panels set in each arm.
‘We have done what we can,’ he said grimly. ‘You will miss the chance to meet Chirastes in person, confessor, but at least you will witness the final ending of his insurrection, which may give some satisfaction.’
More klaxons began to sound, not indicating damage this time, but instead the preparations for orbital strike, something that consumed colossal power and would require the diversion of supply from many other subsystems.
‘There’s no alternative?’ Klaive asked, attempting to sound more disappointed than relieved.
‘None at all,’ said Orquemond, flipping open the protective guard on the panel and readying the controls for firing. ‘This ends now.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It felt strangely deflating, to see him standing there, the object of so much long-cherished hatred – on death’s edge, unrepentant, gloating.
Ingvar studied Chirastes carefully as he spoke, watching for any sign of deception, a hook, something he could use to provoke the violence that he had always assumed he would unleash in this moment. He wanted to fight him, hurt him, avenge the deaths the man had caused. And yet here they all were, locked in a darkened chamber at the summit of a doomed refinery-spire, deprived of even that meagre satisfaction, condemned to listen only to more stories.
It reminded him of the deflation he had felt after his long service with the Deathwatch came to an end – not the realisation that the Imperium’s enemies were greater in number than anyone could imagine, but that the Imperium was one such enemy itself, like a serpent eating its own tail, consuming its brightest progeny before they could ever come to fruition. Every soul in the room, all four of them, had sworn oaths to the Allfather. They all still cleaved to those oaths, in all honesty, and yet here they were, their blades drawn but unused, rehearsing loathings that had been born more than a century ago, all in the sterile language of diplomats.
‘Tell us everything,’ Gunnlaugur said, his voice thick with his own suppressed fury.
And the man did. He wanted to. He could barely wait to spill the details, unravelling it all, listing the injuries he had done them. He wished to boast, whether to them or to himself. As Ingvar listened, he registered the other danger – the place was comms-blind, sealing them in, away from the reach of both Jorundur and Olgeir. They could not afford to linger in such a state for long, especially given the parlous state of the rig-city outside these walls. Still, they had come a long way for this – if knowledge was all they were destined to take away from it, that was a little better than nothing.
‘I am the knife in your side,’ Chirastes crowed. ‘The punishment for your many sins. The hidden thorn that tears your flesh.’
‘You ordered the death of Hjortur Bloodfang,’ said Gunnlaugur.
‘Hjortur Ageir Hvat, called Bloodfang, Wolf Guard. Yes, I made that happen.’
‘And others of the Chapter.’
‘Many others, yes.’
‘Why?’
Chirastes laughed, a fragile sound, and a thin trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth. ‘Because you all deserve death. You understand that? All of you. I know what you practise, on that hell-world of yours. I know what your shamans preach, and what heresies ferment in the stinking hovel you call your Mountain. It was the labour of a lifetime to learn it. When I told others, they were shocked. They all said the same thing – why is this tolerated? Why do we burn minor heretics in hive-sumps, when there’s a whole planet of the corrupted sitting in plain view! And, you know, I could never answer them. In the end, once you’ve run out of excuses, you have to act. So, a long time ago now, I came to your world.’
Ingvar listened, not just to the words, but to the things the man gave away with them. Chirastes wasn’t affecting this – he really believed that the exercise was over, and that he’d already won. His eyes were bright – too bright. And yet, there was a residual fear under the crazed bravado, a nugget of it, buried deep, something that had yet to emerge.
‘At first,’ Chirastes went on, the words tumbling out, ‘I came with nothing more than a delegate-fleet – the kind of thing the protocols lay down. That would have been enough, on most worlds. I’d have made planetfall with my entourage, and we’d have looked around for a while. Maybe we’d have left, satisfied. But you couldn’t even allow that, could you? You were so thirsty for a fight, so proud of your false sanctity, that my agents came back to me in body-capsules. Sending a message, I guessed. That you were above any authority, even one speaking on behalf of the Imperial cult itself. Clumsy. Brutal. And stupid. That kind of thing might work out in your undeveloped, forgotten slush-pools, but it doesn’t play well in more civilised climes. So we had to come again.’
Gunnlaugur looked at Ingvar. ‘The Incursion of Fools,’ he said.
‘Sounds like it.’ Ingvar’s gaze never left Chirastes. ‘This was 886, your calendar, yes?’
‘So that’s what you call it. Ha. I’m surprised you even keep records.’
‘We remember plenty,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘It was a petty war. None of those who fought it celebrate.’
‘No, they don’t, and no, they can’t!’ laughed Chirastes. ‘Because they’re all dead.’ Then he broke into coughing. By the time he stopped, panting hard, his chin was mottled with blood. ‘Three weeks of war. Three weeks, dashing ourselves into splinters on your defences. We soon realised we couldn’t win. We couldn’t even punish you. So what was left to do? Run off, our tails between our legs? No, we still had tools. We could take names. We could tap your comms, and find out who was there, who was doing this to us. So that’s how we used the time. We bled ourselves out, and all for that. By the time I left your world, my ships burning and breaking apart, I knew who had done this to us. I knew who the guilty were. And that wasn’t the end. It was just the start.’
‘How many?’ asked Ingvar.
‘All of them,’ said Chirastes. ‘Every battlefield commander, every squad leader.’
‘Impossible,’ said Gunnlaugur.
‘Really? You know the fates of all your brothers?’ He chuckled bloodily. ‘You die so very often, Space Marine. That is the problem. You are always at war, rushing from one world to the next. These times have been hard for you, I think. And you never turn down a chance for bloodletting. That’s your other weakness.’ He wiped his chin with the sleeve of his robe, leaving a dark smear. ‘So how do you think Hjortur died? Fighting against the greenskins? Yes, that was how it looked, but we were there, alongside him. And so you never questioned it, because how many hundreds of your kind have the greenskins killed over the centuries? Could you even count them?’ For a moment, the sardonic edge left his expression, and he looked momentarily thoughtful. ‘All that was left was deception. To come alongside you, fight with you. Until the moment came to give the real order.’
Ingvar could feel the weight of his blade in his hand, and the itch to use it was so strong now. ‘This could not all have been done in secret.’
‘It was very difficult,’ Chirastes admitted. ‘An entire administration kept in the dark as to its true purpose. Commands given without attribution, records cleaned up or destroyed, whole regiments of soldiers kept ignorant. But you forget that one thing we do so expertly in this Imperium is to follow orders. I learned that well in my old life – you could tell a cleric to saw his own arm off, if you had the right credentials, and he’d do it. We make it impossible to question, we make it a crime to doubt, and thus we till the ground for such hidden work.’
‘Even so,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘We’re not easy to kill.’
‘No, you’re not! You’re damned hard to kill, every one of you! I had to spend my entire fortune to create an army capable of it. I could once count planets in my possession like another man counts ration-slips. They’re all gone now, all used up. Maybe you encountered one of my hunters before you reached me here. They’re good, aren’t they? As good as I could make them. They still die, of course. But even if a hundred of them are put down, it only takes one to get close enough. That was exactly what I built their units for – to get one close enough.’
And then Chirastes, staggered, falling to one knee, breathing heavily. The woman, the one he’d called Buta, reached out to take his arm. Neither of the Space Wolves moved.
‘You attacked us,’ said Gunnlaugur, almost incredulous. ‘You came to our world.’
‘It is a hell-world.’
‘You never set foot on it.’
‘What do you have to hide on it, then? Why keep it shrouded?’
‘We do not hide,’ said Ingvar quietly, contemptuously. ‘Wherever there is battle, we are there. We do not ask for understanding, let alone affection, only that our own realm remains in our own hands.’
‘There is no realm, save for His! That is the lesson! You tell yourself these stories, you make yourselves into the heroes of your own tedious sagas, and you never examine. You never look at what you believe, what you do. What is the point of preserving an Imperium at all, if its heart is rotten? None! You should all be excised! If I’d had the strength for it, I’d have done it myself!’ Chirastes’ invective came to a breathless halt, and he panted hard. ‘As it was, I struck a blow. A modest one, in the scheme of things, but a blow nonetheless. I beat you. I beat you.’
And that, for Ingvar, was the worst of it. To discover that the Fulcrum, which had seemed for so long like something put in place by powerful and malign forces of the Archenemy, was in truth the lone project of a bitter, damaged man, one who had squandered a system-spanning fortune just to gain a personal slice of revenge, cheapened everything.
‘And yet, we endure,’ Ingvar said. ‘You have wasted your time alive, cardinal. Fenris is unchanged. The Chapter still fights.’
Chirastes raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure of all that, are you?’ Then he coughed up more blood, the fingers of his planted hand splaying out across the deck. Buta knelt down, winding an arm under his chest.
‘Get away from him,’ Gunnlaugur told her, taking up his bolter.
She stared up at him for a moment, then stared at Ingvar.
‘Go, Buta,’ Chirastes rasped. ‘Let them do what they came to do. It is the kind of thing they understand. I suppose I have given them every reason to be angry.’
She finally let him go, limping away and sheltering next to the altar. From outside, back down the corridors, noises of voices being raised in alarm filtered up the stairwell.
Chirastes looked straight up at the muzzle of Gunnlaugur’s bolter. His flushed, drug-ravaged face twitched.
‘I guessed that one of you would find me, one day,’ he said. ‘What a blessing, though, to have it happen now, when all is already–’
Gunnlaugur fired once, putting the bolt straight through the man’s smile and into the decking beyond. Headless, Chirastes’ body thunked heavily over.
Ingvar aimed his bolter at the woman.
‘Wait,’ said Gunnlaugur, holding up a hand. ‘Did you take the same poison?’ She nodded. ‘What part did you play?’
It looked like she was trying to reply, but her words died in her throat. She stared at Ingvar, then back at Gunnlaugur, her hands shaking.
Ingvar moved in closer. ‘It wasn’t the whole truth, was it?’
Still she couldn’t answer. Her eyes widened, the veins on her temple throbbed. Gunnlaugur’s finger slipped from the trigger with a faint click of ceramite.
‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘Take her. We’re leaving.’
The journey in the saviour pod had been exhilarating. Hafloí had barely used the shackle-restraints on the crossing, instead hanging on one-handed as the tube had pirouetted and spiralled through the maelstrom. His sensor loadout had been minimal – just a single lens with some rudimentary local-void schematics that flickered and scrolled madly. Bjargborn had done a good job, though, locking the machine-spirit on to the rat’s trajectory. After the long rush through the delivery tube, the saviour pod had shot through the bloom of exploding starships on all sides, screaming across the narrow gulf between the Amethyst Suzeraine and the Immaculate Destiny.
Still, it had always been a dangerous thing to attempt. Just on the wrong side of foolhardy, probably. If Hafloí had thought about it a little more, he might never have got inside. Klaive’s pod was no doubt able to broadcast Ecclesiarchy access codes during its passage, giving the receiving ship what it needed to lower a section of void shields and bring it inside safely. Hafloí had none of that – just the hope that he could ride fast within the rat’s trail, staying close enough to slip under the screens and somehow penetrate the hull when the moment came.
Of course, it hadn’t worked out like that. The rat had had too great a head start, and despite Hafloí overloading the pod’s thrusters to catch up, the lead capsule had vanished from the scopes just moments before he was was lined up to crash straight into the uprushing battleship. With its tether lost, the saviour pod had spun wildly off course. Hafloí had fought hard with the basic controls, pulling the tube out of its suicidal plunge and hauling it back onto something like a stable trajectory. The battleship’s towering sides had whirled around in the tiny realviewer, rapidly coming into focus and displaying its ranks upon ranks of active cannon-mouths.
For an uncomfortable few seconds, it had seemed inevitable that he’d be smashed against those gunwales. It had taken a huge effort to swing the pod’s nose under the closing void-aegis, tearing close in against the ship’s gilt-edged flanks, before he’d found enough power to boost clean between the physical bulk of the hull perimeter and the glittering energy field of the shields. His fuel counter had ticked away, the thrusters had started to cough, and still there was nowhere to bring it in – the hangar doors were all shut, and a saviour pod was far from having the forward armour to punch through the outer plates unaided. He’d swung it in as close as he could, scouring the artificial landscape as if it were an asteroid’s crust, pulled towards it all the time by unstoppable momentum.
