I blinked, banishing the red rime of clotted blood that had crusted over my iris like a dirty lens. Aching bones and limbs protested, but I managed to rise. It was as if a Titan’s foot was resting on my back.
I took a faltering step but staggered, falling painfully on one knee. I hadn’t walked in a while, I had no idea how long. The cell was abjectly dark despite my enhanced eyesight, and I had lost all sense of time.
Rising to my feet again, I trembled, but stayed upright. Waiting like that for a few moments – it could have been an hour, it was difficult to gauge – the tremors ebbed and then ceased entirely as my strength gradually returned. I got three more steps before the shackles binding me to the wall yanked me back. I scowled, looking down at the chains fettered around my wrists and ankles as if seeing them for the first time. Another was fastened around my neck, attached to a collar. I pulled at one experimentally, assessing resistance. It did not yield. Even with two hands, I couldn’t break the chain.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ a familiar voice uttered from the darkness, making me quickly turn.
‘Show yourself,’ I demanded. My throat was sore from the sharp air in this place, and my voice lacked conviction because of it.
Even so, a face loomed out of the shadows at my command. It was pale, framed by closely cropped black hair, with sunken cheeks and cold, glassy eyes. Sharks have eyes like that – dead eyes. But it was a man, not a shark at all. It was my brother. One I barely recognised.
‘Pleased to see me?’ asked Ferrus Manus, in gravel-raw tones.
‘What? How is this poss–’ I began before the blade slipped into my side. As white fire exploded in my flesh, I realised that my gaolers were here too, waiting silently in the dark. They had brought a great many swords with them. I heard them slip from scabbards before they sank into my body.
Before I blacked out, the charnel stink of Curze’s breath washed over me, and as I fell again I caught a last glimpse of my cellmate.
Those same dead eyes staring, Ferrus lifted his chin.
Around his neck was a bloody scar, partly clotted with his primarch blood. I knew the wound, I had inflicted several during my time as a warlord. It was from decapitation.
‘As you can see,’ he answered, ‘it’s not possible.’
And my world was swallowed by darkness.
CHAPTER THREE
Discovery
‘What is true faith? Is it belief in the absence of empirical truth? No. Faith is a manifestation of will, it is the fealty-price given in the presence of actual godhood and the only protection from its divine wrath. That is true faith.’
– spoken during a meeting of the Lodge
by a Chaplain of the XVII Legion
Sebaton took a deep breath of clean, outside air. Confinement inside the catacombs had begun to manifest as mild claustrophobia and with the night air cooling his skin, he let the relief from being out of the hole wash over him. His heart was hammering so hard, he felt the need to put a hand over his chest just to quieten it. Fear of enclosed spaces wasn’t something he had suffered from before but the sense of creeping dread, that intangible belief that something – or someone – was tracking him like a bloodhound, had unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
‘Get a damn grip,’ he chided.
Despite his promises to the contrary, he was right back where he didn’t want to be. He hoped after the last time that they would have left him alone. He had dared believe he was free, but he would never truly be free, not from them. And so, here he was.
Darkness had fallen completely over the ruins and rain was trickling from bruise-purple clouds above, pattering on the canvas awning of his tent.
They had made camp on a rocky promontory overlooking the dig site. The ruins were behind Sebaton, about twenty metres down, reachable via a slightly inclined slope. The other side of the promontory dropped away into a sheer-sided cliff, below which was a short expanse of grey scrub wasteland that was slowly being eroded by the creeping pipework and industry of Ranos.
It was also the pain that had driven him out. Sebaton had felt it like an ache at the back of his skull, an itch behind his teeth that refused to be scratched, a bitter taste under his tongue that made him feel sick. It hurt to simply bein the hole. The closer they came, the harder it got to be down there. Sebaton wasn’t sure if that boded well or ill for his endeavour. His employershad been detailed about the object of this excavation, providing everything he needed to recognise it, as well as what it did, how it worked and what he was expected to do with it once he had it. This was the worst thing, not the digging, but what came next – his mission.
It had grown colder above the dig site and Sebaton nursed a cup of cooling recaff in one hand in a vain attempt to warm up, kneading his right temple with the other. It didn’t help; he was still cold, and the migraine still lingered.
‘Are you all right?’
Varteh had followed him and was approaching up the slope, pistol loose in the holster, moving with that same soldierly confidence he always had. Sebaton stopped massaging his head, allowing his hand to stray to the pistol he wore, but immediately berated himself.
Got you jumping at shadows, he told himself. When did you become so paranoid?
Who are you kidding, you’vealways been this paranoid. Comes with the territory.
‘Fine,’ Sebaton lied, taking a sip of the brackish caffeine. He grimaced at the taste.
‘Sorry,’ said Varteh, reaching him at the summit of the ridge. ‘My brewing skills aren’t as honed as my ability to kill people.’
‘I’m hoping you won’t need to employ the latter.’
The ex-Lucifer poured himself a cup, but didn’t answer.
‘It’s hot, at least,’ said Sebaton, turning to face the city as Varteh joined him. ‘Well… warm.’
They chinkedtheir cups together.
‘What are we drinking to?’ asked Varteh.
‘Getting out of here.’
The ex-Lucifer’s expression suggested he thought Sebaton meant more than just Ranos. He took a rolled up stick of lho-leaf from his jacket pocket, offering one to Sebaton, who refused.
‘No, thank you. My mind feels overstimulated as it is.’
‘Keeps me sharp,’ said Varteh. ‘Funny what you miss when you’re out.’
Sebaton turned to see the soldier’s profile. ‘Out?’
‘Service, the Army.’
Ah,thought Sebaton, out…
Now it was Varteh’s turn to ask, as he picked up on the change in mood, ‘Something wrong?’
‘Freedom, Varteh. You’re talking about freedom.’
‘Not everyone desires it. And I was thrown out, remember? For some, routine is an anchor that keeps them grounded, stops them from drifting. I’ve met plenty of soldiers who think like that. They can’t function without it. Downtime is like hell for men like that.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sebaton, taking in the sight of labyrinthine industrial works, manufactorums and hab-blocks, ‘I believe you.’ Tiny pinpricks of flickering light emanating from drum fires, cook stands and furnaces illuminated the otherwise drab vista. Sebaton imagined the hordes of indentured workers clustered around them for warmth. It had been months organising this dig, finding the correct site and then the excavation itself. Now, with the object of his visit so close, Sebaton was more than ready to leave.
Varteh thumbed over his shoulder. ‘So, why here? I know you won’t give me details and I honestly don’t care if you’re doing this for profit or prestige, but this place is just rubble. There’s no tomb here, no Gyptian sarcophagus waiting for us to open it. Does it even have a name?’
He wasn’t wrong. Even with the benefit of looking down on the ruins from above, it resembled nothing of the fortress it had once been. Now it was a rotting shell of overhanging beams, like spears of broken limbs jutting from the burned-out husks of long forgotten halls. For many years the people of Ranos, and even Traoris, had been in thrall to the masters of this fortress and the seven others dotted around the planet. This one had been the last, its octagonal border barely visible. Eight, eight-sided fortresses. Even that word was a misnomer. Some had referred to them by another name – temples.