*And the demiG.o.ds that men have fashioned and manufactured," John countered. *Creatures such as Lorgar, polluted by the warp, are only as dangerous as they are because they were already primarchs. Mankind has made G.o.ds in their own image, and those G.o.ds have proven false."
He looked at the Word Bearer. Narek sat, his face half in shadow, listening.
*Believe me," John said, *I would help you if I could. I despise the Ruinous Powers more than all things. I would fight against any part of their influence."
Narek stood up.
*Then tell me," he whispered, *what is your task? What is it that you must perform for your alien masters? What duty must you complete so you can be finished with your service and free to help me?"
*They want no less than you, Narek," said John. *They want a primarch dead."
Narek grunted. *Whose life do they seek?"
*That of Vulkan," said John Grammaticus.
*Why?"
*Their motives are too complex to explain easily," said John.
*But Vulkan is here? He is here on Macragge?"
*So I am informed. His arrival has been foreseen. He vanished by teleport into the aether more than a solar year ago, and was presumed lost a but I understand that the strange properties of the Pharos have brought him here, across the void."
*I care for none of that, human," said Narek. *Nothing except my Legion. Let us find Vulkan. Slay him as you are bidden. Then you can help me."
*Oh," John sighed, *if only it was as simple as that."
*Explain."
*I"ve been tracking his mind since I arrived on Macragge," John said. *Tracking him so I could find him. And I"ve learned that... well, Vulkan is mad. Utterly insane."
*How?" asked Narek.
*The best I can read it, he was tortured, extensively and extravagantly over a long period of time. It has quite broken his mind. In his state, he is ridiculously dangerous."
*So we will be cunning," said Narek.
*That"s not all," said John. *It is possible to kill a primarch. They are demiG.o.ds, but they are still mortal, to an extent. Enough fire-power, venom, or explosive force..."
John looked straight at the Word Bearer.
*There is a reason the Cabal armed me with this specific weapon to take down Vulkan. They know that he has a very particular, unique trait. He doesn"t die."
*What?"
*Like me, he is functionally immortal. He resurrects, even from the most catastrophic demise. To kill an ent.i.ty like that, you need something really special. And that spear, Narek of the Word, is a ritual weapon if ever there was one."
Narek glanced down at the fulgurite spear. It was lying on the top of the carrybag at his feet.
*Oh," said John, *and according to my instructions, I can"t do the deed myself. I have to deliver the spear to another primarch who is willing to strike the blow."
He paused.
*So, Word Bearer... I have to kill an unkillable, immortal demiG.o.d who has the power of fifty men and also happens to be violently insane. Do you still want a part of that?"
Vulkan screamed his anguish. He swung the mace. The sweep of it made the air howl.
Curze dodged the almost certainly lethal blow. He turned, bolted along the length of the roof slope, and leapt over a broad gap onto the green-tiled crest of the Southern Portico.
Vulkan gave chase. The blood on his armour had already dried. The punctures that Curze"s claws had made in his torso had closed. The internal organs that had been shredded and torn were re-forming. Vulkan cleared the gap as easily as Curze had done, and landed on the end of the portico"s long roof.
He arched his back and turned the mace in a huge, one-handed rotation, launching it headfirst at the fleeing Curze.
Released, the mace flew like a missile. It struck Curze high on the left shoulder, and knocked him onto his face. He slithered down the slight incline of the roof. The mace crashed off the tiles beside him and slid to rest.
Vulkan came bounding along the roof to reach his enemy. There were lights in the yard below, dancing stab lights that chased hard, bright beams up at the roofline. There was the chop and whicker of gunship engines.
He closed on Curze. Curze struggled to rise. At the last second, as Vulkan"s powerful hands grabbed at him, Curze rolled over to face his brother. He had hold of the battle mace.
He drove the weapon into the side of Vulkan"s head. His jaw broke. Teeth shattered audibly. Blood squirted from his ear and nostril.
Vulkan staggered backwards, but did not fall. Curze came at him, pressing his advantage. He struck Vulkan twice more in the body with the stolen mace.
Powerful lamps flooded them with white light. They became two silhouettes trading blows in a colourless glare. Two Ultramarines Storm Eagles, engines howling, circled the portico roof, while dozens of others filled the skies over the Fortress.
One of them came in, almost at the level of the roofline, and sprayed two warning salvos of fire from its twin-linked heavy bolters. The grouped blasts blew out great sections of the portico roof, directly behind Curze. Flames, dust and fragmented tiles erupted in all directions.
Curze, furious at the intervention, turned and shrieked directly into the lights of the Storm Eagle. The gunship had a confirmed lock on him, and its weapons blazed.
In a huge bound that spread his cloak behind him like wings, Curze leapt clean off the portico and landed on the hull of the Storm Eagle. Its engines immediately started to wail as it recoiled from the roofline. Its nose dipped as it turned out.
Curze clung on. He punched his right fist through the c.o.c.kpit canopy, and seized the human pilot-serf by the throat, the blades of his claw encircling the man"s collar.
Attempting to flee, Curze hijacks a Storm Eagle gunship *Away from here," he hissed over the screaming engines and streaming wind.
The pilot looked at him, eyes wide, choking.
*Now!" Curze added.
Unsteady, yawing badly to starboard, the Storm Eagle turned and began to move across the gate yard away from the Residency. It was running at less than rooftop height.
*Climb," Curze insisted over the headwind. *Climb!"
The gunship began to gain alt.i.tude.
Behind it, Vulkan braced himself and leapt too. He slammed onto the gunship"s starboard tail wing on his belly, and held on. The impact made the gunship sway laterally as it continued on its slow, advancing hover.
Vox channels went wild. The squads of Ultramarines in the Portis Yard and Residency quadrangle started to fire in a free-for-all at the wavering gunship, realising that it had to be sacrificed if Curze was to be stopped.
Bolt-rounds and las-bolts clipped and boomed off the Storm Eagle"s armoured hull. Sparks leapt and shrapnel flew. Fireb.a.l.l.s bloomed and left scorched patches on its armoured skin.
Curze looked down the hull of the Storm Eagle and saw Vulkan. The gunship"s nose was coming up. It was approaching the line of the Aegis Wall. Curze kept his hand clamped around the pilot, threatening to shear his head from his shoulders.
*Over!" he said.
Vulkan clawed his way up the wing, over the starboard engine cowling. Curze judged the weight of the mace in his free hand. He waited until Vulkan clambered clear of the cowling. Then he hurled the weapon with a vicious snap-sling of his arm.
The mace"s head struck Vulkan in the face. He lost his grip, and flew sideways, into the Storm Eagle"s tail a.s.sembly, which he tried to grab hold of.
He failed, and fell off the gunship"s stern.
Vulkan plummeted about thirty metres. He neither landed on the yard inside the Aegis Wall, nor fell the greater depth of the wall and Castrum on the outside.
Instead, he struck the top of the wall, smashing into the castellations with a force that broke his spine. Then he dropped, limp, and folded onto his side on the wall-top walkway, a bright mirror of blood leaking out of his shattered body, his life seemingly extinguished once more.
The gunship, with Curze clinging to its c.o.c.kpit a.s.sembly, continued over the wall. Ferocious hails of gunfire chased it from the yards and wall-top. It slugged on. The Castrum dropped away. Curze was high over the city and the parkland.
*Down!" he hissed.
The pilot gurgled. He had been bleeding profusely since Curze had first smashed the canopy in his face, and seized his throat. The gunship began to bank towards the towers and spires of the city.
Gunfire continued to track it from the walls and battlements. The second Storm Eagle, searchlamps blazing, thundered over the Aegis Wall in pursuit, taking a far more direct and aggressive path than its stricken twin. The other gunships aloft circled back to allow the Storm Eagle to take its kill.
Curze glanced back, the night wind lashing his hair, and saw it gaining.
*Down!" he ordered.
The Storm Eagle began to drop fast. The spires, city halls and residential citadel spires north of Martial Square rose to meet it, their windows lit. Raid sirens were blaring down in the streets. Curze could see the criss-cross light streams of traffic in the streets below. t.i.tan"s Gate, immense and unlit, was a black henge, a silhouette against the distant bright radiance of the landing fields far to the south.
*Down!" Curze ordered again.
They were lumbering low over the high tops of towers and domed vaults, or even between the bulk of the tallest spires. Their course was arching east of Martial Square, swinging towards the high, block shapes of the Treasury and the new Senate House.
The Storm Eagle chasing them began to fire. Bright heavy bolter fire spat orange darts through the night, shots that reflected off the high windows of the towers on either side of them. They found their mark. Parts of the tail a.s.sembly burst away in a shower of spalled metal and a gout of burning gases.
The gunship that Curze was riding lurched, its engines straining.
They were losing height very fast, nearly smashing into the north face of the Consular Record Building. The starboard wingtip raked a flurry of squealing sparks off the building"s stonework.
Curze had been watching his visions all the while, letting them play through his head like that damaged pict-feed, sorting the true from the false, the trustworthy from the untrustworthy. His entire operation since planetfall had been guided and directed by his visions.
Vulkan. Vulkan was the only part of it that his visions had not shown, nor even hinted at.
He saw gla.s.s now. Water, fire. A specific dome.
More shots. .h.i.t the diving Storm Eagle from behind. A greater chunk of it exploded and broke away. It fell rather than flew, no longer controllable, a chunk of mangled debris arcing like a meteor to impact, trailing fire and wreckage. Twenty metres above the rooftops. Curze saw the dome, the particular dome. He let go of the pilot"s throat and jumped, falling away from the plunging gunship.
Feet first, he hit the dome of the building, a great and ornate crystal canopy, which shattered under him. Pinwheeling in a torrent of glittering fragments, he fell hard and hit water in a plume of spray.
The Storm Eagle, leaving huge, jumping yellow flames in its wake, continued on for another five seconds, and struck the east facade of the Treasury building fifteen metres above the street. It made a dazzling orange fireball that punched through the wall and incinerated the chambers within, and simultaneously spat back into the night sky, lofting and expanding and raining burning fuel and micro-debris. A nanosecond after impact, as the fireball was forming, the Storm Eagle"s munitions payload went off, and a second, larger, brighter fireball engulfed the first, blooming like a small sun over the Treasury Yard. The orange glare was reflected in a million windows, except in the nearby streets where the blast blew all of the cas.e.m.e.nts out.
Curze surfaced in a spray of water and shook his head. He was in the princ.i.p.al Nymphaeum of Magna Macragge Civitas. A large, circular building with columns supporting the famous crystal dome, it housed the oldest of the natural springs that had been worshipped in the days of the Battle Kings as sacred to the water spirits.
Curze thrashed to the edge of the stone pool and rose out of the water, letting it stream off him onto the flagstones. He glanced back at the spring-fed pool, polluted with fragments of smashed crystal. The clear water was stained. There was a fair measure of blood in it.
Not all of it belonged to Curze, not by any means.
He smiled, a black crescent in the sloshing blue twilight of the Nymphaeum. He walked towards the exit, towards a night-bound city lit by the fury of burning wreckage.
Curze understood cities at night. The secret was, you either made them darker, or you made them burn.
He waited for the visions to show him where to go next, and which of those things to do.
Tetrarch Dolor strode along the walkway, on top of the high Aegis Wall, staring at the fireball blooming over the eastern Neapolis. The night sky was full of circling, beating gunships.
Verus Caspean waited for him.
*Is that a kill?" Dolor asked.
*His escape vehicle was brought down east of the Martial Square," said Caspean.
*Can we confirm his death?" Dolor asked.
*Not yet, lord tetrarch," replied Caspean. *Forces are on the ground. We"re waiting for word."
*I want a body," said Dolor, *preferably one I can spit on. Burned bones at least."
*Yes, lord tetrarch."
*Less with the "lord tetrarch", my n.o.ble and good friend, Verus," said Dolor. He looked Caspean in the eye. *Phratus has fallen. Until the Avenging Son can be found, I have authority in the Fortress, and I directly name you First Master to succeed Auguston."
*My lord."
*We must surely maintain and reinforce the chain of command in this black hour, Verus," said Dolor. *You will perform the duty in superlative fashion."
*Thank you, tetrarch," said Caspean, saluting and bowing.
*We will know no fear, First Master Caspean," replied Dolor, saluting back. *Make your respect known!"
The Ultramarines around them clattered out brisk salutes.
*Will we know no fear, Valentus?" Caspean asked. *This night may have seen the violent death, in the s.p.a.ce of one full hour, of four of the Emperor"s sons."
*These bold and dread facts are yet to be confirmed," replied Dolor.
*One might be," Caspean replied. He led the tetrarch along the defensive platform to a section of the battlement that was wet with blood. Ultramarines stood all around, their heads bowed.
Vulkan lay in a broken heap, on the walkway, surrounded by a wide slick of his lifeblood.