Ahriman: Exile (35 page)

Slowly, he knelt and bowed his head.

‘I am sorry, my brothers.’ He looked up. The slits of his helm flared with cold light. ‘Now we begin again.’

Epilogue

The bridge of the
Sycorax
was quiet for all its vastness, a place of soft, mechanical clicks and the whispered commands of the Cyrabor machine-wrights. The seer crystal floated at the centre of the bridge’s nave, a sphere as wide as Ahriman was tall. It sang in Ahriman’s mind, like a glass bell struck by a silver hammer.

Images of battle clouded the crystal’s depths. Ahriman watched as a spear-hulled ship spun against the distant stars. Its engines fired in ragged blasts. Burning vapour seeped from fissures in its hull. It fired, ragged scatters of brightness spattering into the dead void, hitting nothing. A macro-warhead hit the dying ship. The view in the crystal blinked white as the warhead detonated. The ship tore into pieces, each one burning as it spun away into darkness like a torch tossed into a well.

Ahriman’s mind pulled the view back and vision within the sphere broadened. Las-fire latticed the blackness; the stars were lost amongst the detonations of torpedoes. He could trace the formations of ships moving together, cutting through the void to circle and kill their prey. The bright splash of a high-mass plasma explosion drew his eye for a second. Some would escape, there was no helping that. Fate would find them, he was sure.

Many of Amon’s assembled fleet had transferred their loyalty to Ahriman. Some had not. A handful of renegades and mongrel warbands had answered his call for fealty with cannon fire. Others had fled. Ahriman had sent one order: run them down.

Of such necessities are monsters made
, he thought. But it was necessary; there would be blood and ruin before the end of the path they now walked. It was unfortunate: a waste, but one that they would recover from. Most of the warbands drawn to Amon’s flame had seen little issue with transferring their loyalty to another lord. Ahriman curled his lip.

Of the Thousand Sons only two groups had refused to bend their knees to him. Calitiedies, lord of an order of sorcerers from half a dozen Legions, had run before any other.
The
Second Circle
had not fired but had not responded to Ahriman’s call and had taken two dozen of his brothers beyond his reach. He had let them go, ordering the hunters to different targets.

Ahriman turned away from the crystal, and the image within the sphere clouded. Carmenta sat in the command throne, her flesh and augmetics hidden by a thick robe of red velvet. Her head was bowed, the light of her eyes dim within the cave of her cowl. Cables ran from the deck to slither over the throne and vanish within the robes. The cables buzzed with a teeth-aching purr. She had been there ever since they had disconnected her from the machine tower in the hangar bay. Even that had nearly killed her. That did not worry him – it was to be expected.

‘Mistress,’ he said clearly, and stepped to the base of the command throne. Her head came up slowly. Green light ignited beneath the cowl, growing slowly brighter. A drone of machine code came from her hidden mouth. She paused. Ahriman heard something rasp in her throat, and then she shivered.

‘You wish to tell me that I will live,’ said Carmenta, her voice a halting monotone.

‘Which speaks, the
Titan Child
or Carmenta?’

‘Which answers, Horkos or Ahriman?’

He laughed, then wondered if it was supposed to have been a joke.

‘My intention was humorous,’ said Carmenta as if following his thoughts. ‘It was a poor effort.’

He nodded, then reached up to pull the horned helm from his head. He took a breath, noted the odd scent of cinnamon in the air that seemed to follow the Cyrabor everywhere.

‘The
Titan Child
will be destroyed before we leave,’ he said carefully.

‘Before the
fleet
leaves,’ intoned Carmenta, the emphasis a sudden rise in volume. ‘What need do you have for one husk of a ship now?’

‘It is–’

‘A place of memory, and discarded pasts.’ Carmenta raised her machine eyes to Ahriman’s gaze. ‘Let it burn.’

‘You will be the
Sycorax
now,’ said Ahriman, looking across the bridge as if to indicate the bronze and silver instruments, the soft movements of the machine-wrights. A clicking pulse of machine code breathed from Carmenta, and then she shook her head slowly.

‘No. The
Sycorax
will be me.’ She coughed a stream of numbers. ‘A fitting punishment.’

A pause hung in the air.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why forgive my betrayal?’

Ahriman gave a tired and crooked smile.

‘We must all hope that betrayal can be forgiven,’ he said and turned away.

After he had gone, and his footsteps had faded, Carmenta nodded once to herself. Her head lowered, the light in her eyes dimmed, and she began to mutter the dream song of her machine.

‘It should be destroyed,’ said Kadin as they watched the silver doors shut on the bound daemon. The screaming faces of gargoyles carved in high relief covered the doors, their cheeks and eyes incised with runes. A cluster of blue-robed acolytes began to mutter, and the runes began to glow and crawl across the silver, sealing the daemon’s power within.

‘It can’t be,’ said Astraeos. He watched as the final ward burned with amber light. He wanted to turn away but he kept watching the door. He had watched as the daemon was bound and its cell sealed, and felt its presence shrink in his mind. The connection was still there, it would always be there. He understood that. ‘We are bound together, it and I. Entwined. And somewhere inside its shell Cadar might still linger.’

Kadin shook his head and turned away from the door. The sound of pistons and gears briefly broke the quiet of the narrow passage. Kadin’s armour was still blackened and gouged. He had refused to recolour it. Astraeos thought that it looked like the cracked surface of skin. His own armour was blue, and he held a high-crested helm in the crook of his arm. A snake of fire coiled on his shoulder.

‘Was it worth it?’ asked Kadin. Astraeos said nothing, but also turned away from the door. They began to walk, their strides out of rhythm, under the yellow flames of the glass oil lamps which hung from the passage’s ceiling.

At its end, they passed through a small door back into the rest of the ship. They moved through corridors and chambers filled with strange faces and stranger voices, carrying their silence with them until they came to a viewport set into the hull of the ship like a vast eye watching the stars. They stopped. Beyond the crystal the Eye of Terror looked back at them, its bruised glare unblinking.

‘What now?’ said Kadin after a long moment. Astraeos did not look away from the Eye. He thought of what Ahriman had told him, of what came next.

‘War, Kadin,’ said Astraeos and let out a long breath. ‘A war against fate.’

Maroth hurried through the corridors of the
Sycorax
. His armour hissed in time with his heavy muttering breaths. Sometimes he had to stop and feel his way by touch, or by sniffing through the muzzle of his helm. He passed scribes, initiate acolytes, warrior slaves and machine-wrights. Many looked at him but none challenged him or allowed their eyes to meet the sightless holes in his helm. The creature, for it could be no Space Marine, had Lord Ahriman’s mark upon it and its life belonged to Ahriman alone.

When he found the passage and door he sought, he gave a small whimper of pleasure. A passing cluster of yellow-swathed serfs hurried out of sight. Only when they were far beyond seeing or hearing did Maroth raise his hand to the door and mutter. It was a small door, deliberately unobtrusive, but if any had seen him undo the wards bound into it they would have done more than wonder. The orange light of oil lamps lit the narrow passage beyond.

With the door resealed behind him Maroth straightened and began to walk. His movements were silent. If there had been anyone to see in this utterly silent corridor they would have noticed that his shape seemed to bleed into the shadow, and that the flames grew and burned the green-blue of glacial ice as he passed.

At the silver door he stopped and made a sound like the hoot of a night bird. The gargoyles worked into the door snarled with silent anger, and runes in their eyes burned with blue light before settling to contented inactivity. He raised a hand and pushed the door open.

His master was waiting for him, bound in chains, the husk of its physical form as pale as white marble. It smiled at him. It always smiled. The door sealed behind Maroth. He looked up at a face that had once belonged to a mortal named Cadar. He would have laughed, but he rarely laughed truly. He did not really see the point.

‘Our endeavour succeeded,’ said his master, its voice like the crackling of ice across lightless water.

‘Yes,’ Maroth replied. ‘Yes it did, sire.’

About the Author

John French
has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas
Tallarn: Executioner
and
The Crimson Fist,
and the audio dramas
Templar
and
Warmaster
. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels
Ahriman: Exile
and
Ahriman: Sorcerer,
plus the short story ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella
Fateweaver
, plus a number of short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.