Garro knight of grey, p.8
Garro: Knight Of Grey, page 8
The swarm writhed over the ground, forming into something like a great black curtain – and with stolid, theatrical grandeur, that curtain parted and so did the ranks of the corrupted. The Reaper of Men was coming to answer Nathaniel Garro’s defiance.
Garro took a deep breath and planted his boots firmly amid the mess of mud, burnt stone and rock fragments. Slowly, he removed and stowed his helmet; tactically, the gesture might have been unsound, but it felt wrong – even dishonourable – to do this hiding his face behind armour plate.
His bolter was mag-locked across his armour and his sword was at the ready for the draw. He let one hand drop to the hilt of the ancient blade, fingers tracing the studs that would activate its power field. These small, instinctive, pre-battle rituals gave him focus; they let him briefly forget the nature of the foe marching towards him.
But only for a moment.
What strode forth out of the Death Guard ranks barely resembled the primarch Garro had known, now a creature seen through a despoiled lens. Tall and emaciated, a hooded cloak draped over metallic battle armour; but the cloak was putrefying, rancid cloth where before it had been heavy, dark material, and the armour – once the magnificent, master-crafted work of combat artisans, shining bare steel and bright brass – was now creaking, rotten and rust-rimed.
And worst of all was the figure who wore them. Garro had once bent the knee to a sallow, hard-faced master with a gaze that knew fury, knew sorrow, and knew honour. The monster he saw before him now, wreathed in poison dust, consumptive and decayed, was death incarnate.
Horrified, ashamed and saddened beyond measure, Garro met the gaze of his liege-lord and gene-sire for the first time since the great betrayal at Isstvan. And he asked the only question that he could.
‘What have you become?’
‘I am what we have always strived to be,’ Mortarion intoned, eyes flashing in the dark beneath his hood. ‘Undying. Unstoppable. Unmatched.’
A pall of fear rose in Garro’s hearts and his hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. ‘What did it cost you, my lord?’
The question seemed to surprise the primarch, and he hesitated before replying. ‘The price… The price was everything.’ Through his breather mask, Mortarion took a deep inhalation of the toxins whirling around him, as if sustaining himself with them. ‘Garro,’ he wheezed. ‘You were one of my best. I have not forgotten. You can be again. You can rejoin your battle-brothers. There is still time.’
Of all the words he thought Mortarion might utter, the last Garro expected were these. After everything that had taken place since Horus Lupercal’s heresy had commenced, Garro had embraced the path of the outsider, the outcast.
‘He will win,’ said the primarch, as if plucking the thought of the Warmaster from Garro’s mind. ‘It is inevitable. The sons will soon kill their father, as is fitting. And a new world will beckon.’ Mortarion reached inside his cloak, and when his skeletal hand returned, there were two corroded metal cups in his grip. Black fluid, dark as night and oil-thick, shimmered in them.
He offered one of the cups to Garro, and compelled by an impulse he could not resist, the warrior accepted it.
Garro stared into the depths of the cup and sensed something powerful uncoiling around him, as if the air itself were transforming. A boundless grief, a longing he had buried deep within, reawakened.
The breaking of his Legion’s oath had left him bereft in ways he could not articulate. He thought of Gallor’s anger and bitterness, of the younger warrior’s unanswered sorrow at what they had lost.
There was an undeniable part of Garro that wished time could be turned back, that what was sundered could be remade. And perhaps, in one way, it could be.
‘Might you honour me by sharing a drink?’ said Mortarion.
INTERVAL II
The planet Barbarus: after reunion
The shuttles touched down in an area beyond a city the locals called Safehold, in a sector of cleared grasslands that helots were busily turning into the planet’s first starport. A sleeting deluge of black rain was falling, hissing where it landed, giving everything a bone-deep chill.
Nathaniel Garro was the last to descend the ramp of his transport, letting the others file out before him, a handful of warriors among a mass of human auxiliaries brought down from the fleet in high orbit. He saw other figures disembarking from the rest of the craft in the shuttle flight – more towering legionaries like him, clad in newly forged, newly liveried armour.
When the majority of them had left the surface of this planet over a solar year ago, they had walked with the tread of men. Now they returned as transhumans, reforged by the great science of the Emperor of Mankind and His scienticians. Garro heard them laughing and calling out to people in the crowds who waited for them, the prodigal sons returning to the death world that had borne them.
Not all of those taken from Barbarus to be uplifted had survived the process. Many perished passing through the gauntlet of the change, their bodies rejecting the implants with terminal effect. In the usual scheme of things, neophyte legionaries underwent the implantation regimen and enhancile conditioning over a cycle of several years, and at a far younger age – this had been Garro’s lot, plucked as a stringy youth from the Albian outlands on Terra when he was only thirteen winters old, for induction into the Legion. The new intake had no such consideration, forced through a crash-course process that turned these men into Legiones Astartes with uncommon rapidity.
Some said that it was only the Emperor’s personal intervention in the programme that had kept the Barbaruns from dying to a man, but Garro thought otherwise. After a year in their company, he was firmly convinced that the sons of this blighted world were too stubborn to die easily.
The process of reunion was well under way. After finding and reuniting with his lost son Mortarion, the Emperor had presented the primarch with the war fleet and the warriors that were his bequest – the XIV Legion, known since their inception as the Dusk Raiders. Mortarion’s first act had been to cast that name aside and rechristen them as the Death Guard, in echo of the fighters he had led in his rebellion against Barbarus’ cruel rulers, the Overlords.
Garro was no longer conscious of the new insignia on his armour, the white skull upon a six-pointed star rendered in dark green. Like many things, it was another change to take on and assimilate before the Legion returned to their first calling – the prosecution of the Emperor’s Great Crusade.
Taking his first step onto the surface of the planet, Garro looked across a bleak landscape of grey hills, past granite tors and distant mountains, and up at the soured sky. He tasted faint toxins on the damp breeze, the weak traces of the poisonous mists that wreathed the higher ranges of Barbarus’ atmosphere, and at his feet, stiff blades of metallic-looking grass crunched under his boots. The planet was hard and unwelcoming, and he did not doubt it hid a thousand ways to kill the unwary. That was the truth of a death world: nothing weak could exist there.
He skirted the landing field, avoiding the crowds. The people gathered around their changed brethren, many of them marvelling at their new forms, some daring to reach out and touch their faces and the surface of their grey-green armour. Garro avoided their gazes, instead following the approaches to Safehold. Nearby, he saw evidence of construction and more transformation – buildings and machinery transplanted from the fleet, brought down in hopes of accelerating Barbarus to the level of the rest of the Imperium. In a way, the planet was being uplifted too, and Garro had learned that new initiate cadres from the Barbarun populace were already being selected. As the Legion had once taken its tithe of young men from Terra, now it would do the same here. And perhaps, at some future point, there would come a time when there were no more Dusk Raiders among the Death Guard.
He shook off the thought, finding himself at the foot of a great black wall near the city gates. Assembled out of rough-hewn stone slabs, it was carved with countless names in the local Low Gothic script. Garro reached out and ran the fingertips of his gauntlet over the letters, inclining his head in solemn respect. This, he understood. A memorial for the dead.
‘Why do you bow to them?’ Hearing the voice, Garro looked up. A woman in a military uniform stood a short distance away, arms folded over her chest, eyeing him gravely. The way she unconsciously favoured one leg told him that she had been badly injured once in her life, but her manner was that of someone who would not let such a thing prevent her from fighting. ‘They’re all cinders and the lands are better for it.’
Garro drew back his hand. ‘These are not the names of your war dead?’
‘These are the names of the Overlords and collaborators we slaughtered to free Barbarus,’ she corrected. ‘Written in stone so that any creature who might try to rule our world knows how much it’ll cost them.’
‘Ah. A warning, I see. Forgive my error.’ He nodded. ‘So tell me, how do you venerate those who perished fighting these Overlords?’
The woman frowned. ‘We keep them here.’ She touched her heart and head. Then she took a step closer. ‘You’re one of the New-comer’s warrior-breed.’
‘Newcomer?’ Garro didn’t know the reference.
‘Your Emperor.’
‘He is your Emperor as well,’ noted the warrior. ‘He is Mortarion’s father.’
‘So I hear.’ The woman sized him up, frowning. ‘The iterators He sent here say your kind are remade in His image, yes? You are changed, just like He’s changed our fathers, cousins and brothers.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why just the men?’ She drew herself level to stare Garro in the eye. ‘Seems a waste of good resources.’ She nodded at the wall. ‘Women shed their blood to carve those names as much as men did.’
‘We’ll ask that question of the Emperor when next we see Him,’ said another voice. Garro turned to find Mortarion’s wolfish comrade in arms striding towards them. Typhon gave a nod and held back a grin.
‘Is that you, Calas?’ The woman gave the other legionary an incredulous look. ‘What happened to the man I knew from Heller’s Cut?’
‘That skinny young fellow is in here somewhere.’ Typhon’s expression hardened, as if he didn’t care to be reminded of his past. ‘Don’t you have a post to mind, soldier? Be about it. Lieutenant Garro and I have things to discuss.’
‘We do?’ Garro watched the woman depart.
‘I’ve been observing you.’ Typhon’s steely gaze bored into him, and Garro found his intensity disquieting. ‘Most of the Terran-born men in the Legion have embraced the reunion with gusto, welcoming their new brethren, training in live-fire exercises with Mortarion and the rest of us… As we have each learned the ways and manners of the other.’ Typhon pointed a finger at him. ‘But you, Garro. You could not do so at a remove, as others have. I think something in you needed to see the world where your primarch grew to manhood. To feel its air in your lungs, its mud under your boots.’ He opened his hands, taking in the landscape around them. ‘Am I right?’
‘Your insight does you credit,’ said Garro. ‘Yes. I wanted to know Barbarus for myself. To walk the path the primarch did, albeit for a brief time.’
‘And now you are here, what do you think of it?’
Garro looked at the wall of death, considering what it represented, and then away towards the distant, forbidding crags. ‘I am beginning to understand.’
‘The Legion is undergoing a seismic shift,’ said Typhon. ‘The Dusk Raiders you knew are gone. The Death Guard rise in their place.’
‘It is the will of the Emperor and Mortarion.’
Typhon was silent for a moment. ‘The primarch is in the process of reorganising the Legion into something… better suited to his command style. Your Great Company, Garro. The Seventh. It is currently without a captain to lead it.’
‘That is correct.’ Garro tensed, suddenly uncertain as to where the conversation was leading him.
‘Would you like the glory of that posting, lieutenant?’
He considered his next words carefully. ‘I would welcome the duty of it. But as for glory… I don’t care for that.’
Typhon laughed, as if he had just scored a victory. ‘It seems everything I’ve heard about you is true, Garro! Good. In the wars to come, Mortarion will need a man he can rely on to lead the Seventh.’
‘The primarch has my blade and my oath,’ said Garro. ‘It will always be so.’ But he couldn’t keep a thread of doubt from his voice, and Typhon heard it.
‘You have misgivings,’ said the other warrior. ‘You ask yourself, how can you hope to become part of a Legion bequeathed to a world and a master you have never known?’
A chill ran through Garro’s blood. Typhon spoke the words as if he had plucked them from the hidden depths of the warrior’s thoughts.
The other legionary went on. ‘You feel… you are not one of us?’
At length, Garro shook his head, finding the resolution that had previously escaped him. ‘No. Perhaps I did have reservations, but not now. You…’ He indicated Typhon and by extension, all of Barbarus. ‘You are one of us. Even if you and your kindred were born here, the sons of this planet remain children of Terra, even if millennia separated us. You are grown from those who struck out into space before the Age of Old Night. We all rise from the same birthworld. We are all humans, tracing our lineage back to that place.’
‘Indeed?’ Typhon placed a hand on Garro’s shoulder and his smile returned. ‘Well, captain. Perhaps one day I will meet you there. I will walk your path, and see it for myself.’
FIVE
Reaper of Men
No Quarter
Fall of a Champion
Garro looked into the cup, and in the tiny sea of darkness it held, he saw oblivion.
In the past, this Death Guard tradition was a celebration of their fortitude, a customary ingesting of poison that the powerful physiology of a legionary could resist, endure and overcome. But like everything else about Mortarion’s sons, it had been twisted into something new.
Garro was certain that the cup contained blood, or something like it.
His primarch’s vitae, gifted like an offering – and if he were to drink from it, what then? It would be submission.
Sundered from his Legion for so long, Garro would be changed and remade just as they had been, but he would be part of them again. For what seemed like an age, he had buried the sorrow of his self-imposed exile beneath a righteous fury towards his former brethren. But now, just for a moment, the warrior allowed himself to acknowledge a singular truth.
‘I did not wish this,’ he said quietly, his words caught on the wind. ‘To turn against the Legion I pledged my life to. I did not want to draw weapons against my battle-brothers. It is anathema to me.’
‘Every path across the moor is thorny,’ intoned the Reaper of Men, as he watched the legionary with severe, yellowing eyes. ‘But there is always a way back. Nothing is constant, Nathaniel. The universe that surrounds us is not fixed. It is malleable, forever in states of change and evolution. Decay and rebirth. My eyes were opened to it in the warp.’ He gestured to the sky and the distorted light from the war raging over their heads. ‘This truth goes beyond Horus and my father. Beyond this conflict, or any other. You can see it too. If you wish. You can become greater, as we have.’
Garro looked up. ‘That… is not our fate, my lord. I am a warrior, gene-forged and uplifted in the Emperor’s name. You are His son, cut from His flesh, bred to be a war god made manifest. We were not created to evolve. We were made to fight and to die for the glory of the Imperium of Man.’ His hearts felt hollow as the words fell from his lips. ‘We are but weapons. Instruments of fate. Knights of Grey and Lords of Destruction.’
Oblivion beckoned. It would be easy to tip back the cup, to swallow the contents and let his burdens be taken away. As Garro held that thought in his mind, he felt empathy for Euphrati Keeler. He understood how obliteration could seem like the better of every option, the seduction of the impulse to let go and fall towards the darkness.
But at the far end of that spectrum was the singular instinct that had guided Garro’s hand from the very start, the purpose that could never be denied.
‘We can be more than weapons if we wish,’ said Mortarion. ‘We can defy fate.’
‘No.’ Garro shook his head. ‘We are the tools of higher powers, of the greater players. If you cannot see that, sire, then you are blind.’ At the legionary’s words, the primarch’s cold expression shifted towards anger, and Garro brought his reply to its core. ‘The difference between us, the truth I have learned since I broke with your command, is that I accept it. You still believe you can determine your destiny, but you are wrong.’
Mortarion released a low growl and pointed at the cup in Garro’s hand. ‘I would have your answer.’ The primarch’s rasping tones carried back to him. ‘Will you return to us, or will you perish here?’
Garro raised the cup, and with deliberate slowness, he tilted it until the oily contents drooled out to spatter and hiss against the broken stones. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed the empty hemisphere into the dirt at Mortarion’s feet, as a ripple of terse reaction flowed through the silent Legion watching them.
‘Mistake.’ The primarch drank down his own cup and savoured it. ‘You have no concept of what you have rejected.’
‘I know full well,’ Garro replied, his gaze raking over the other Death Guard, over the ranks of monsters that had once been his brethren.
‘Step aside, then, and I will gift you with a swift death.’ Mortarion’s lip curled. ‘Call it a mercy, in honour of the past times you served me.’
With a crackle of unchained energy, the power conduits embedded in the metal of Garro’s great sword came to life as the legionary drew the weapon. The crystalline metal of it sang as it cleared the scabbard to hang in the air before them.
