[Narrative] Building a New Empire From the Ashes of the Old

+++ WAR ROOM, "HARVESTER OF SORROWS" +++
+++ 9054024.M42 +++
+++ FIRESTORM NEBULA +++
+++ THE VOID +++

A hammer fell from numb, nerveless fingers. Its head, devoid of pale light, hit the deck in welcoming darkness. Breathe now, the night seemed to say. What was left of the warband took the warning when it came, waiting...

Far from any world, the Harvester of Sorrows hung in space where the empreyan had spat it out: a misshapen dagger some four miles long, hurled carelessly and forgotten in the dark. Had some observer been present in the airless void, they might have remarked on the blinking, faded array of dull lights across the vessel's spine and starboard flank; on the twisted, melted, skewbald surface of the port side.

On that starboard side, in a chamber not yet fused with its neighbours or open to the vacuum of deep space, lightless by custom and near-yet-not religious necessity, something was afoot. A practice that necessitated the ship stop here, abandon the warp, far from any planetary mass with its accumulated density of the real or worse, the psychic noise of a population. It was necessary to undo a thing that had been done, or to bind it up entirely: to kill a warrior, or to cure him.

The warrior was in chains. None of his brothers in arms felt it wise to have him otherwise. So few of them were left now; a mere dozen in fit shape to fight, not even a full score if one were to count the walking wounded. His skin was blanched, his hair conspicuous by its absence, and one of his eye-sockets a hollow, long-healed wound. It hadn't killed him. He was Astartes, he was Twiceborn, and the weapon that had just slipped his grasp had not let him die.

Inert, it lay. Lifeless, lightless, mere ancient iron wrapped in its cables and bindings of more recent make. The question now was - where was its inhabitant? Gone? Exorcised? Or fully one with the body that had held the weapon in its mortal hands.

The fingers twitched and clutched. Life, it seemed, had not left them completely. Shoulders shuddered and limbs strove against the chains. The body drew a long, ragged breath, and another, and spat something that hissed and dribbled on the metal of the - circle. The ritual circle in which it knelt. Was bound. The chains tensed, and slackened.

"Can't blame you," it said.

"Skallagrim?"

A watcher - no longer a hypothesis, but a figure concrete and actual - crept forward. The pale face with its awful empty eye and its serene sneer turned to face him, and bared its teeth. Skallagrim was, he realised, trying to smile. And it was Skallagrim - the wry, staccato voice, bereft of its guttural daemonic wetness.

"Dol Mezan? Is that you? What... where are the others?"

"It's... been a bad retreat. Disarrayed. The corsair ships scattered. Mercurio's company, the veterans, they boarded the Eternus and fled. We rode the warp's tides inwards, toward the Great Rift; found a cache from the old days. Szandor and Tar Zahaan took the bulk of our strength to retrieve it. The last we heard from them was more than half a year ago: they'd driven off some scions of the Seventeenth, and were making for the cache site. Since then, nothing."

"What of Vadinax?" Hoarse and hollow, dry and desolate, the question choked out of Skallagrim. Movement in the dark, on his blind side, suggested Dol Mezan was - yes. Water. Plasteel between his lips and teeth. The tinny aftertaste of recyc.

"What of Vadinax? What do you remember?"

"The hollow world. The meeting of warlords. Steadfast Repentance, our goal. Then the Warlock. With a proposal. And that damned hammer."

Dol Mezan sighed. With a hiss and a pop and a soft thunk, he removed his helmet and set it down; took a knee before the circle, confident at least that Skallagrim would not kill him. He'd struggle anyway, with his armour stripped of its heaviest plates and pauldrons, and powered down. Dol Mezan looked him in the face; the former champion and the resurrected warlord. At least Dol Mezan had kept his looks. A lean face, for an Astartes, and lank dark hair, passing almost for Nostraman.

"In sum? We failed. Not absolutely - Steadfast Repentance was broken, but not by our hand. We, the Sixty-Fourth, disgraced ourselves. Our cults were compromised, and the Fifteenth barred our retreat. Despite all signs and portents, the Red Angel did not come - not for us, anyway. I'm afraid you were almost sacrificed for nothing. This is the last ditch, and it's taken eighty-eight days. We triggered your sus-an membrane and left you down here."

"And the Warlock?"

A chuckle, from Dol Mezan. "He wounded himself to start the ritual process, then sickened. Infected wound. I'm sure he'll be delighted to know you're not - "

"Say it." Skallagrim hawked and spat again, and stirred in his chains, hauling and heaving in dead-weight armour. "Possessed? Do not fear the word. I am... I feel different. Hollow. Something left me. Torn out to the roots. But I am not possessed. Zaal is gone. Only Skallagrim remains."

"I was going to say dead," said Dol Mezan, and gave another chuckle. "Am I to trust you, old friend? Am I to set you free?"

***

They went to the Warlock, first, with Skallagrim's armour powered up, out of necessity, but still stripped down, greaves and pauldrons absent; he walked with the aid of a stanchion he'd pulled from the walls outside the brig, with considerable effort, and its broken tip scraped and clanked against the deck with every second step. Work crews would seal that cell, with the hammer inside the circle where it belonged. Too dangerous to handle; too powerful and valuable to cast into the void.

One could only hope, as Dol Mezan hoped, that the effort of walking off nearly three standard months in chains would distract Skallagrim from the absences around them. The absence of Legion brothers, moving on their own errands or watching over the toiling crews; the absence of proper respect, bowed heads or hushed voices.

Mercutio's lair had once been the chamber of the Navigator; Kyrax was dead, had died seven hundred years ago, and Mercutio had eaten his brain and preserved his eye to approximate the sight that let the ship be guided. The Warlock had claimed his refuge too: he didn't need the throne for its own sake, but it had the points of interface with the command deck, the engines, the field projectors. That it gave him space to practice his art away from his superstitious brothers was a happy accident: he could fill it with all the sigils and fetishes he wanted, all the warp-twisted skulls harvested from the most unfortunate crew and all the dry and creaking parchment on which he kept up his old duty, recording the Company's history at arms.

He was at his scrivener's easel when they entered; his penmanship was spidery, lacking illumination but not without flair. He was unarmoured, wrapped in a threadbare toga of Legion blue, and as such nothing could choke off the sharp gasp he made as they entered. 

"Dol Mezan. Why is he not in chains - "

Addressed thus, Dol Mezan leant against the inside of the doorframe and smirked inside his helm. "Ask him yourself."

"Surely you can't mean - " Mercurio's lipless face split into a grin, and he made a triumphant little hiss through a mouthful of needle teeth. "Skallagrim?"

"Aye. Alive, and free." Scrape. Clank. Scrape. Clank. Skallagrim limped forward on the stanchion, into the candlelight by which the Warlock worked. "Shame about your eye."

"Sacrifices are the prerequisite for magic." Mercurio's grin fixed itself on his face - it seemed the Warlock couldn't quite bring himself to relax. "Most don't come - "

He buckled before the final words could leave his lips; the stanchion had struck him at the base of the ribcage, expelling the air from two lungs out of three and smacking him into the easel. Tumbling to the floor with his work, the Warlock scrabbled and scrambled, reaching for something, anything - the athame was too far away - why hadn't he stayed armed? Rolling, crawling, and gasping as the stanchion struck him again, pinning him between the shoulders, he hissed a curse that died between his teeth when a boot struck his jaw.

"Pleased to be the first," said Skallagrim. "Now. Stop talking. A word from you, a twitch, and - "

"You need me!" Mecurio snapped back. "You have no Navigator. No other soul aboard who can read the Sea of Souls. So desist with these threats and - "

This time, the boot struck with real force; the Warlock's jaw cracked at the impact, and he drooled blood and broken teeth and acid spittle as he cursed.

"My life is not yours to toy with, Warlock. My flesh not bait for the Powers. My blood not ink for your prophecies and histories. You are needed. Needed to serve. Dol Mezan!"

"Aye, brother?" The former champion stirred from his repose; he'd watched this display with all the impassive detachment his helm offered. It was normal for Nostramo, normal for the Eighth Legion; fairly tame, if he was honest. Mercutio deserved a lot worse for the gamble he'd made with Skallagrim's soul - but maybe there was some lingering gratitude there for the Warlock's saving it again?

"Flay this wretch. Every last scrap of skin. Split his wizard's tongue. Suture him to his throne. Then seal this chamber. He can guide us by mind-impulse."

Ah. There it was. Dol Mezan's flensing knife was in his hand as he started to walk, drawn silently and held ready, the curved steel of the hilt sitting between fingers of his armoured hand.

"You dare - "

The stanchion shifted, jamming at the base of the Warlock's neck, and the boot struck a third and final time. Mercurio lay, face down in the pooling ruin of his shattered jaw, and gurgled an impotent protest.

"I dare. Count yourself lucky that we need you."

***

Dol Mezan arrived in the war room as the night cycle turned; his knife was sheathed, but his chainsword was in his hand and ready. By now the word had gone out, and the secret with it; all Legion brothers had been called to order, and Skallagrim would have seen how few there were to answer. 

What remained of their strength at arms was gathered in the vaulted emptiness beneath the bridge. They were a circle of fragments, a mosaic in midnight blue, twos and threes standing well apart, the lines of mistrust clear between them. A sad and ragged dozen they were - assuming one counted Mercurio, who he suspected would not be seeing combat again. Just short of a score, if walking wounded were included. One full claw, where they had been close to six before Vadinax.

"One Claw," Skallagrim said, echoing his thoughts aloud. "One Claw, all that remains of the Sixty-Fourth. We reform. Dol Mezan has command."

"I am Faith Lost - "

"I will not join the Ones Who Love Hate - "

"Like hell will I follow the naysayer - "

"Silence, by the Powers!" Dol Mezan gunned the chainsword, let its roar rise, levelled it at the throat of the brother to speak - Zaradan, he thought - then turned it slowly around the gathered brethren, addressing every last one of them. "We are too few for bickering. Had you heeded me at Vadinax we might have been spared these losses - you will answer to me now."

"We are one Claw," said Skallagrim, in the breath that followed. "Stained with Legion blood. Put aside your designations. No Talons. No Pinions. Only the Hand. The Hand of Vengeance."

Vox-clicks clacked among the handfuls of Legionaries. Dol Mezan thought he knew what they would speak of: vengeance, vindication, the shame of Vadinax. Powerful motivators to warrior souls. They knew they had failed, and been left behind; this was their chance to make that a point of strength. This was a moment when things could change.

Zaradan was the first to strike his chest in salute, in the end. With that point of resistance mooted, the others were swift to follow. Skallagrim snarled his broken smile, and inside his helm, Dol Mezan followed suit. The circle closed around them, and Zaradan spoke:

"So be it. Where do we begin?"

"Our Navigator is still recovering, but bridge crew report a hulk has transitioned from the warp nearby. We could reach it in a few nights' sub-aether sail."

"That'll do," said Skallagrim. "We come in close, on the port side; dock where our guns are worthless; then board. Two nights. Then I want you all in midnight clad. Every soul who still has armour and a blade."

"What are you planning to do about that?" asked another brother - Zagor, one of Those Who Love Hate, Zaradan's near-twin in and out of armour. "Your last weapon is hardly worth the wielding."

Skallagrim nodded, slowly, and spun the stanchion he was still carrying, swinging it back and forth. "You'll find me in the forge."