The Unremembered Empire Part 35

Narek went down into the sluice water, hurt and gagging, his plasteel fingertips sc.r.a.ping on the limed brick walls.

John got up and staggered past him towards Damon Prytanis.

*You b.l.o.o.d.y idiot!' John yelled. *I had him. I had him right where I wanted him!'

Damon nodded. *Right. Eating out of your hand. You'd virtually broken that torc's restraint, right? You were right in his head.'

*No! I was negotiating. I had him. I was persuading him!'

*Screw that,' said Damon. *Life's way too short. That's your trouble, John. You like to solve problems the hard way. You don't like to get wet. You're too genteel. Let's exit.'

They started to run along the drain, side by side, towards the next outfall.

*What are you doing here?' John asked him. He slowed his pace for a second and winced.

*What?' Damon asked. *What's up?'

*My head. It's been blanked for too long. Everything's coming back. Perceptions. It's not pleasant. I asked you a question, Prytanis. What are you doing here?'

Damon grinned.

*The usual. Gahet asked me to check you were performing according to schedule.'

*You're my insurance?'

*Positively, yes.'

*And if it looks like I'm falling down on the job?'

Damon Prytanis shrugged, Guh'hru in one hand and Meh'menitay in the other.

*Guess I'd just have to mess you up to teach you a lesson,' he said. Then he laughed.

*I'll tell you what you've messed up,' said John. *This whole entire a.s.signment. The Cabal should never have sent in the cavalry.'

*Cavalry, am I? You know something, I actually was, once. Seventh Cavalry. Tell you what, those Lakotaa'

*You know what I mean,' said John.

*So do you. You know they had to,' said Damon. *You were wavering.'

*I was not.'

*You so were. This job needs to get done, and done fast. Vulkan has to die. That's the way it has to go. That's the order of it all. You've got this spear thing?'

John gestured with the carrybag in his hand.

*Good,' said Damon. *Good for you. That's all that matters. Let's get this done. I'll be there as your support. Your... guarantee. So tell me, Johnny, how is this supposed to work? Gahet was not specific.'

*I place the spear in the hands of a primarch, and in his hands, that spear becomes capable of slaying another of the eighteen.'

*Vulkan.'

*Yeah.'

*Do we know why Vulkan is the target?'

*It's just another version of the Alpharius Position,' said John. *Horus has to win this war, and win it so brutally that the human race is engulfed and takes the taint of the Primordial Annihilator with it to its grave. The victory of Horus and the death of our species is the pyre that burns Chaos out. That means major loyalist players like Vulkan must be turned or taken out.'

*So, the spear?' asked Damon. *Which one of Vulkan's brothers do you give it to? I mean, here on Macragge? I don't see either Guilliman or the Lion being willing to take a pop at Vulkan.'

*There is one viable candidate on this world,' said John Grammaticus.

*There's another primarch here? Who?'

*Curze,' said John.

Damon stopped and whistled. *Curze? That maniac is on Macragge?'

*Yes, he is,' said John. *The last thing I sensed before the Word Bearer captured me was the Night Haunter making planetfall.'

Damon shuddered. He looked up at the sewer roof.

*Screw that. I didn't sign on for Konrad Curze.'

*Well, Damon, let me put it this way... * said John. *Boo hoo, too late.'

He didn't hear Prytanis's sardonic reply. A fierce migraine was knifing him suddenly, almost forcing him to his knees. Tears welled in his eyes.

*John? What is it?'

John Grammaticus's psykana gift was suddenly returning in full force. The flooding rush of restored perceptions was almost overwhelming. He was registering the unmediated auras and perceptions of the Civitas around him. It was too much, like a vox floating between channels, its volume turned up full. He struggled to establish some control.

He got sharp waves of pain, anger, outrage. He looked at Damon Prytanis.

*I can feel...' he tried to explain. *My psyk's returning. Fast. Oh.'

*What?'

*It's a good thing we're not relying on Guilliman or the Lion,' said John, struggling to maintain his wits.

*Why?' Damon asked warily.

*Guilliman is gone. The Lion too. They're dead, Prytanis.'

*Are you joking?' asked Damon. *Tell me you're d.a.m.n well joking!'

*I wish I was,' John replied. He was shaking with the intensity of the psyk-rush. *The sense of hurt and loss is so strong. I'm getting it from the minds of hundreds of Ultramarines and Dark Angels.'

*Pull yourself together. Come on. If this is true, I need you sharp.'

John swallowed hard and nodded.

*Yes. Right. I will,' he mumbled. *It's just a lot to deal with. You wouldn't understand. Imagine being deaf for a few hours, getting your hearing back, and then getting shouted at by everyone in a city all at once.'

Damon maintained eye contact, concern on his face.

*I'm all right,' said John. *It's becoming a little more stable now.'

He glanced over his shoulder.

*You didn't kill him,' he said.

*The Word Bearer?'

*Yes.'

*d.a.m.n. I thought I'd done that very nicely.'

*Well, you didn't,' said John. *I can read him, getting back on his feet. He'll come after us. He's good at that, Damon.'

*We had better keep moving then, hadn't we?' said Damon.

They used a stone rain chute to clamber back up to street level. It was a few hours before dawn. The sky was heavy with air cover from the Fortress.

*That's a major search,' said Damon.

*Curze ripped the heart out of the Fortress tonight,' John replied. *They're hunting for him and for Vulkan.'

*Can you find either of them?'

John paused, concentrating.

*Curze, no. It's as if I can read him sometimes, and then at other moments he's utterly invisible. As though he can cloak his mind. When I can read him, it's unbearable, but the rest of the time he's not even a shadow.'

*What about Vulkan?' asked Damon.

*Wait, I'm trying.'

*Well, we need them both,' said Damon.

They walked slowly along a quiet backstreet between two grander avenues. John focused his mind. He had been attuning it to Vulkan's thought signature since setting foot on Macragge. It was hard when that thought signature was so deranged. It was also hard in the middle of a city filled with so many agitated, unguarded minds.

He smiled.

*What?' asked Damon.

*I think I have Vulkan. He's moving south of us, south-east. Going into Anomie Deme.'

Damon nodded.

*What's he doing there?'

*No idea. He's hard to read. He's... not entirely sane these days.'

*Great. We're tracking a mad primarch?'

*Yeah. Didn't the Cabal tell you that? Didn't Gahet brief you? I hope they gave you plenty of ammo. And danger money.'

Damon scowled. *But you found him?'

*Yes.'

*Still no read on Curze?'

*Not yet,' said John.

*Well, one of them is a start. Good job. Good job, John. You look pleased with yourself.'

John was. Focusing on Vulkan's thought pattern had revealed something else to him. The enforced psychic isolation created by Narek's torc had allowed his brain to quietly, subconsciously unpack.

Suddenly, he was able to see clearly what the fa.r.s.eer's conduit had imprinted on his mind. He understood what Eldrad Ulthran wanted him to do.

He understood how.

He understood why.

He took a deep breath. Finally, here was a way he could serve the forces of light. He could defy the wishes of the Cabal, and fight for his birth-race. At last he could strike a proper blow for his species, something he had been longing to do since his xenos masters first dragged him into the Horus War.

Of course, it would cost him his life, but that hardly seemed a big price to pay.

The pair of them straightened up and moved off down the street, following a route that Damon had dug up on a data-slate, a route that would get them into Anomie Deme by the shortest path.

High up on a jutting, ornamental rain spout, a crouching shadow watched them move.

Curze licked his lips.

This piece was a fascinating new addition to the spilled jigsaw of his mind. From the moment he had stepped out of the Nymphaeum pool, new visions had been coming to him. The crazed, random flow of his waking dreams had shown him a possibility called John Grammaticus. There was something curious about Grammaticus. Curze wasn't sure what it was exactly, but it was creepy and abnormal. Grammaticus was not a regular human. He was, somehow, like many humans all at once, or like a single human with inexplicable dimensional proportions. In particular, his fourth dimension, his time, was stretched, elongated...

It didn't matter. The latest reflections had shown Curze one especially clear thing. There was a spear, a spear that could kill Vulkan. Not only that, Grammaticus was supposed to give the spear to Curze so he could use it.

He would use it. He would use it to finish what he had started in the Iron Labyrinth.

It would make the night perfect. Sunrise would reveal that Konrad Curze had descended like an eclipse upon bright Macragge and, in one period of darkness, had slain three of the Emperor's sons, including the one that, apparently, could not die.

That was a fundamental achievement, a superlative ritual achievement, a crus.h.i.+ng achievement: haughty Guilliman, the vainglorious Lion, the unkillable Vulkan.

All three, in one single night.