‘Your forgiveness is irrelevant, Leo. I either saved our lives or went back for Skatar’var and signed all our death warrants. I made the pragmatic decision, the only one I could in the circumstances.’
Leodrakk looked away, out past the bridge and towards the space port. Even from this distance, the patrols were visible.
‘Why tell me this now, brother?’ asked Numeon.
‘Because I wanted you to know there wasn’t any bad blood between us for this. I would have wanted to go back, and I know all three of us would have died. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. There will always be a part of me that wonders if we could have found him, if he had survived and we passed him by, only metres away.’
‘I have had the self-same doubts regarding Vulkan, but I stand by my decision and know if presented with it all over again that I would not waver from the course I have already taken. History cannot be unwritten and scribed anew. It is done, and all we can hope for is that we perform our duty until death, irrespective of the destiny we crave for ourselves.’
Pergellen interrupted on the vox.
‘Speak, brother,’ said Numeon, reacting to the Iron Hand’s comm request as he activated the bead embedded in his ear.
‘ I have eyes on our former cousins.’
‘How many?’
‘ More than you or I should like.’
‘Then these are our final hours.’
‘ So it would seem, brother,’ the Iron Hand replied. There was no regret, no sorrow in his voice. It served no purpose. There was but one duty left to perform now.
Numeon thanked the scout and cut the link.
‘Get them ready,’ he said.
Leodrakk was turning to carry out the order when Numeon clutched his Pyre brother’s arm. ‘I know, Artellus,’ Leodrakk told him, clapping the Pyre captain on the shoulder. ‘For Shen, for Ska, for all of them.’
Numeon nodded, and let him go.
‘It’s actually quite stunning when you look at it from this distance,’ Numeon said once Leodrakk had gone. He was watching the lightning flashes over the ash wastes.
‘The word that springs to my mind is deadly,’ Grammaticus replied. He was on his feet and standing next to the Pyre captain.
‘Most beautiful things in nature are, John Grammaticus.’
‘I didn’t have you pegged as philosophical, captain.’
‘When you’ve seen the fury of the earth up close, watched mountains spit fire and the sky redden to the hue of embers, reflecting its hot breath against the ash clouds overhead, you learn to appreciate the beauty in it. Otherwise, what’s left but tragedy?’
‘It’s all about the earth,’ Grammaticus muttered.
Numeon looked sidelong at him. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. You are doing the right thing.’
‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’ The Salamander turned to regard Grammaticus. Towering over the human, his face was unreadable. ‘Betray me, and I’ll find a way to kill you. Failing that, I’ll take you back to Nocturne and show you those fire mountains I mentioned.’
‘I get the impression I won’t see their beauty like you do, Salamander.’
Numeon’s eyes seemed to burn cold. ‘No, you won’t.’
Behind him, the human became aware of another’s presence. Numeon nodded to him.
‘Hriak, all is ready?’
‘Everything is in place, the plan is formed,’ he rasped.
Grammaticus raised an eyebrow, ‘What plan?’
Numeon smiled. He could see that it unnerved the human.
‘I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Dawnbringer
I named it Dawnbringerfor a very specific reason.
Names are important for weapons, they attribute meaning and substance to what might otherwise be merely tools for war. Curze never paid much attention to that. His concerns are less sentimental, bloodier. To my benighted brother, a spar of sharpened metal is as good as the master craftsman’s finest blade if it kills the same. This was his oversight, this was why I had fashioned the hammer as I had. Dawnbringerwas different. It would literally bring the light.
And now it was before me at the heart of Perturabo’s labyrinth, but the hammer was not what my eye was drawn to first.
Both of them were dead. I knew it before I crossed the threshold but I still grieved for them upon sight of their bloodless bodies.
‘Were they dead before I even entered this place?’ I asked.
To my surprise, Curze answered.
‘ Before you came aboard my ship.’
His voice was disembodied, but it came from somewhere in the heart chamber.
Nemetor, of course. It would have to be him. He was the last of my sons I ever set eyes upon. Curze knew that would breed a special blend of pain for me. The other one brought me a different kind of grief, for he was part of a brotherhood I had long considered my council.
‘Skatar’var…’ I whispered the name as I raised my hand to touch his skeletal body, but fell just short of making contact.
Averting my gaze from my dead sons, I resisted the urge to cut them down from where they hung like meat and instead focused on Dawnbringer.
The hammer was exactly as I remembered. It looked innocuous enough resting on an iron plinth, though I can humbly say it is the finest weapon I have ever crafted. It shone in a place that was drab and ugly by comparison.
The heart of the Iron Labyrinth was an octagonal chamber, supported by eight thick columns. The dark metal seemed to drink the light, absorb it like obsidian into its facets. But it was merely iron, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was heavy and dense with little in the way of ornamentation… or so I at first believed.
As I lingered, I started to discern shapes wrought into the metal. They were faces, screaming, locked forever in moments of pure agony. Beneath each of the arches to which the columns abutted hung a grotesque and malformed statue. They were monstrous things, ripped from a madman’s fever dream and trapped in this iron form. No two were alike. Some had horns, others wings or bestial hooves, feathers, talons, a hooked beak, a swollen maw. They were wretched and repellent, and I could not imagine what had compelled my brother to sculpt them.
If this was a heart, it was a blackened, cancerous organ whose slow beat was as the chime of death.
Seeing no other recourse, I walked up to the plinth and reached for the hammer. Some kind of energy field impeded me, giving out an actinic flash of light as I touched it and making me recoil.
‘ You didn’t think I’d just let you take it, did you?’ Curze’s voice rang out, everywhere and nowhere as it was before.
I backed away from the plinth, the gate by which I had entered the heart closing behind me as I warily eyed the shadows. I had no intention of leaving. There was no escape that way. The end of this torment was in here with my brother. With the entrance now sealed, darkness reigned fully. There were no lumen orbs, braziers nor lanterns of any kind. I touched the energy field again, prompting a flare of light briefly to encase the hammer before dying again like a candle flame. The flash gave me little to see with, though I turned as I thought I saw one of the statues start to move.
‘These fear tactics might work on mortals but I am a primarch, Konrad,’ I declared, grateful to my father for gifting me these last moments of lucidity. I would need them to fight my brother now. ‘One worthy of the name.’
‘ You think me unworthy, do you, Vulkan?’
His voice came from behind me, but I knew it to be a trick and resisted the temptation to face it.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Konrad. Nor what the rest of us think. You behold your reflection, brother. Is that not what you see?’
‘ You won’t goad me, Vulkan. We’ve come too far, you and I, for that.’