*He"s not likely to come quietly," John said. *All I have is the spear. We may need to put him down first so I can use it."
*Well, let"s see how we go. I"ve got your back."
*You"re not making this any easier," said John. *He"s a primarch!"
Damon sighed, briefly holstered one of the murehk, drew his short-pattern chainsword from under his fur coat and tossed it to John.
John caught it.
*Look after it," Damon said, drawing his other sling gun again. *Look after it, and it"ll look after you. That baby will cut through anything. Even a primarch."
They entered the machine works.
The inner quadrangle was a rockcrete yard layered with dust, grit and shards of ceramic and gla.s.s. Each side of the quad was formed by a ma.s.sive fabricatory shed, with a pillared walkway around the perimeter. The western end of the layout was flattened and smashed, as though a missile had torn through it and delivered a thermic warhead.
Damon and John crunched forward, a shabby rogue in a coat of black fur and a tall man in the dark garb of a repatriation officer, funeral watch division. How appropriate, John thought.
*Got a fix on him?" Damon hissed, prowling along the northern side of the quad, his guns ready. For the first time, he really looked like a soldier to John. In a million years, John could not have imitated that skill, that readiness, that capacity.
John focused.
He"s all around us, John thought. Vulkan is here, and he"s everywhere. His mind is so raging, so powerful. I needa *Johnny?"
*Give me a second," John replied.
I can taste the hurt. He"s so wounded. I recognise that. I recognise that! What is it? What is it? He"s feeling something I feela Vulkan came out of the shadows. He was right on them.
*s.h.i.t," said Damon Prytanis.
Vulkan was an immense shape, eyes blazing. He looked like a ma.s.sive stone statue brought to life, for he was covered in dust and dirt. He had spent the last fifteen minutes digging in the pit of the crash site. He had a hammer in his hands. It was his hammer a Dawnbringer a the one he had fallen with, the one that had brought him to Macragge. It had been buried much deeper than the level his body had been recovered from.
Howling, the maddened primarch flew at them.
*s.h.i.t!" Damon cried again, backing up fast.
Vulkan swung the hammer at them. It came cross-wise at human head-height, whistling through the air. Damon ducked. John threw himself to the right.
Both Perpetuals cheated death by a hair"s breadth. The hammer-swing sliced the empty air and demolished one of the quad"s pillars.
Damon had ducked so frantically that he fell. Vulkan loomed over him. Damon rolled, barely in time to avoid the next swing, which smashed the paving stones where he had been sprawled a moment earlier.
Damon kept rolling, turning fast a a combat move. He tumbled out of Vulkan"s immediate kill-radius, and then rocked up on one knee, firing.
*Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he exclaimed, letting rip with both of the murehk. Vulkan, four times his size, plated and raging mad, charged at him, with Dawnbringer raised.
Damon Prytanis expended both of his plasti-crystal ammo cores in less than four seconds. Vulkan was a big target, and Damon shot thousands of razor-rounds through his bulk.
He shredded him. The pavement behind Vulkan, for a distance of some eight or ten metres, became a huge splatter pattern of blood and ruined tissue, where separate through-wounds and impacts had gouted.
Vulkan dropped to his knees a few feet short of Damon, blood venting and squirting from hundreds of wounds.
Then he vanished, leaving nothing but the vast pooling spatter of blood behind.
Damon got up. *What the h.e.l.l?" he muttered.
Nearby, John was getting back on his feet.
*That hammer of his," John said. *It has a teleport function."
*Oh goody," Damon replied. He ejected the smoking stubs of his spent cores and loaded new ones. Then he began to circle, both sling guns out in front of him, straight-armed.
*You feel him?" he asked.
*No," said John.
*Tell me when you feel him."
*Obviously."
A long second pa.s.sed.
Damon looked around. *What"s taking so long?" he asked. *Some sort of teleport lag?"
*Behind you!" John yelled.
Damon turned in time to see Vulkan appear behind him in a swirl of charged dust. He was no longer a dirt-grey statue. He was a revenant thing, painted head to foot in his own blood.
Damon narrowed his eyes and opened fire again.
*Yeah, you great big b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" Damon said, his pistols whipping and wailing. *Teleport all you like. You mess with me? End of."
A second relentless hurricane of razor-fire ripped through the primarch. John could feel the air dampening with blood mist. Vulkan staggered into the lethal streams of gunfire, but only made a step or two.
He fell, first to his knees, then face-down. His body and skull were deformed and misshapen from the sheer structural damage wrought by the murehk overkill.
Vulkan tried to rise. He was shuddering, and weeping blood like a fountain. He got halfway to his knees, using his hammer as a crutch.
*Oh, just give it up," Damon said.
He stepped forward, put both Guh"hru and Meh"menitay to Vulkan"s forehead, and blew the back of the primarch"s skull out.
Vulkan dropped dead.
Damon looked around at John. Damon"s face was dappled with spots of Vulkan"s blood. He began to reload again. His hands were shaking.
*I don"t know how many times I can kill him," Damon said desperately. *Will you please do it? Fast?"
John approached the fallen primarch, raising the spear. The copper stench of blood was overwhelming.
Vulkan came back from the dead once again.
It was happening faster. It was happening faster and faster each time. New life followed each death at an increasingly fearsome rate. Vulkan"s rage was such that he would not let death keep him for even a second.
He lurched at them with a roar of unimaginable pain, his ruined head still re-forming and becoming whole again. Muscle, tissue, flesh and bone knitted and reconst.i.tuted in front of their eyes.
Damon let out a snarl of dismay. He hadn"t even had time to finish his reload. Vulkan grabbed Damon by the throat and threw him across the quad. The Perpetual landed badly. John heard a bone break.
Vulkan turned to face John.
*I can help you," John said. *Please. I understand your pain. I recognise it. The pain of life and death, of life and death after life and death... I understand. Please, let me help you..."
Vulkan took a step forward, glaring down at John Grammaticus. He was breathing hard, wheezing through shredded lungs that were still regrowing. Blood leaked out of him, through multiple puncture wounds that were still closing.
*I understand," John repeated, trying to sound rea.s.suring.
I understand,+ he sent, simultaneously.
Vulkan wavered slightly.
*I understand. Dying is hard," said John. *Dying hurts. Believe me, I have been there. Please, Lord Vulkan, let me help you. Let me spare you. Let me cure you."
Vulkan paused. He was still dripping blood, and his ramshackle armour was peppered with razor-slits. Slowly, hesitantly, he held his hand out towards John Grammaticus.
Then Vulkan"s head vanished in a mist of blood and brain tissue.
The shot echoed around the quad long after Vulkan"s virtually headless body had fallen.
Painted with gore, John staggered back.
Narek of the Word walked into the quad, lowering his Brontos-pattern sniper rifle. He stood over Vulkan"s body and put two more rounds through the torso at close range.
*He"s dead," said Narek.
*Not for long," John replied.
*Long enough. Use the spear. Do the deed. Then you"re coming with me."
John was suddenly very quiet. The temperature in the quad dropped by ten degrees.
*He"s here," John gasped.
*Who? Who"s here?" Narek asked.
An unnecessarily tall shadow leapt from the quad roof and landed between them. Slowly, it straightened up.
*I dreamed of you," it hissed to John Grammaticus. *Suddenly, I saw you in my waking dreams. You have something I need. Give me the spear."
John shook his head. *Never."
Narek growled and raised his rifle to fire at Curze, but the primarch punched him aside without looking. Blood flew into the air from the impact. Narek landed several metres away.
*Give me the spear," Curze repeated.
*Never," said John Grammaticus.
Konrad Curze smiled.
*No one ever, ever refuses me," he hissed.
*Yeah?" said Damon Prytanis from a few metres away. *Welcome to a whole new painful world."
He opened fire on Konrad Curze with both sling guns.
23.
Life for Life
*In all things there is an exchange; of death for life, of darkness for light, of life for death, of light for darkness. Thus is universal equilibrium sustained."
a Ulthrion Aledred, Precepts of Fort.i.tude Against
the Primordial Annihilator (translated)