Lucius: The Faultless Blade Read online

  The daemon had the face of an angel, cracked and ruined the way a statue is marred by centuries of erosion and abuse. It watched Vispyrtilo, gazing at the blood still slipping out in shining jewels from his chest. It appeared to peer into the Raptor, past his shell of bone and meat, and into the core of him.

  A talon of pure black appeared from nothing, darker than the space between worlds. It lingered, hanging just a hair’s width from the pupil of Vispyrtilo’s left eye. The moment seemed to stretch into infinity, and the legionary wondered if this was how his torment would begin.

  In a flash the talon was gone, along with the daemon that conjured it. The storm of Neverborn receded, melting away into the churning nebulae of lost souls. Vispyrtilo was left standing untouched upon the minaret by the things as they vanished, leaving nothing in their wake save trails of their auras, palpable in declaration of a hunger that had gone unsated.

  Confusion needled Vispyrtilo’s mind. Was this some malevolent game played by the warp’s foul denizens? Had he been taken, and just did not know it? He waited, thoughts rushing through the acid sting of frustration, for several seconds.

  The realisation was the hardest blow he had ever suffered.

  He had no soul left to take. There was nothing remaining within him, nothing of value for even the lowliest of the Neverborn to consume. Centuries of sacrilege, slaughter and betrayal after betrayal had whittled away every scrap of his essence, drained by the god he pledged fealty to. Vispyrtilo, chieftain of the Rypax, could be no sacrifice, because he no longer had any worth to the divine.

  He was hollow. Truly, eternally, empty.

  It had been eighty-one seconds since Vispyrtilo had entered the lift when he turned, his abused muscles screaming as they tore around his iron-hard bones, and began to stagger back inside.

  I.X

  ‘So,’ Lucius smiled, ‘ambition has chosen its day at last.’

  Krysithius was silent. His hands were low, away from his weapons, but his tense posture exuded the threat he desired to unleash.

  ‘Are you certain about this, Krysithius?’ Lucius had not stopped smiling since the other swordsman had arrived. ‘There is still time for you to come here,’ he pointed a clawed finger in front of his cloven boots, ‘and grovel. Still a chance to stay alive.’

  ‘I will not suffer this any longer, brother,’ hissed Krysithius. ‘I will not follow you. Lucius, you are insane!’

  ‘Sanity is never a binary, dear brother,’ replied Lucius, as poison crept into his smile. ‘It never has been.’

  Lucius took a step closer. ‘Climb down from your high tower, go where I have gone and see the sights that I have seen, and then you and I might speak of what insanity means.’

  ‘I do not care where you have been,’ said Krysithius. ‘And I do not care what you have seen. I care about the future of the warband, a future where your place at our head is ended. Now.’

  Sighing, Lucius tilted his head. He looked past Krysithius to the rest of the Cohors Nasicae. ‘So, he speaks for you all, then? You would have him lead you?’

  ‘No one speaks for me,’ grunted Cadarn. The renegade Executioner stood bareheaded, leaning upon the haft of his axe, his patchwork face of burned flesh and scars set in a look of amused detachment. ‘My former brothers, back in the days before they had abandoned their conviction, allowed challenges to leadership by those who felt they would serve better in the role. Disputes such as these were solved by steel, and by blood.’

  A series of noncommittal murmurs echoed from the others. The legionaries of the Cohors Nasicae had served under Lucius long enough that each of them had at one battle or another seen the Eternal die. They all knew what came afterwards, and their bitterness and resentment ­notwithstanding, such experience encouraged them to hold their tongues.

  ‘So, what shall you do, brother?’ Lucius arched the pink flesh where an eyebrow would have once been. He sniggered once, a malignant sound from deep within his throat. ‘Are you going to kill me? I believe that you know how that story would end.’

  ‘No.’ Krysithius shook his head. ‘I won’t kill you. I won’t feed the monster you have become. No, my brother, but I shall take your arms, I shall take your legs, and I shall take your tongue. Cesare will see reason. He will fall in line, and aid me in keeping you alive, just enough to keep the poison that passes for your blood beating through your veins. I will reduce you to a husk, watching the centuries pass by alone in silence, until the only soul at hand to consign you to oblivion is your own. And when that night falls, oblivion is where you shall stay.’

  At that moment, a ripple of understanding passed over Lucius’ face. This protracted feud between them, his brother’s inability to exist beneath his control, had flared up time and again. On each prior occasion, Krysithius had skirted to the edge of drawing steel, but at the last moment he had stepped back.

  This time, Lucius realised, was different. His resentment had finally boiled over. This time, his brother would pass over that line.

  A breath passed from Lucius’ teeth. The world narrowed to a knife’s edge. Only he and his brother existed.

  ‘Brother, I swear here and now by the Youngest God that if air touches your blade you die this night.’

  Krysithius did not waver. In a single calm, formal motion, he placed his hand upon the pommel of Ajennion’s sabre, the ritual signal given to convey a swordsman’s readiness at the start of a duel upon their long-destroyed home world of Chemos.

  Lucius gave a short, thoughtful nod. ‘Very well, my dear brother. So be it.’

  Krysithius’ other hand shot out, flinging a fist-sized sphere at Lucius. The sphere exploded in a burst of sound and blinding light. Lucius grinned as the blind grenade’s detonation tore at his face. He had known his brother would be smarter than to attempt a fair fight. Ajennion’s blade flashed as it blurred from its scabbard. Krysithius launched himself forwards. He knew the ruined condition of his wargear after battle upon the daemon world. He knew Lucius’ ­ensorcelled shell was just as damaged, and that he was badly wounded in the side.

  The blind grenade would be of little help, but it would give Krysithius the second he needed to cover his leap. If combat were to stretch into a protracted clash against Lucius, he would die. He was certain of that. He had to move as lightning, and end the duel before it began.

  Krysithius flew into the dissipating detonation of the blind grenade. He took aim precisely for the soft joint between Lucius’ cuirass and shoulder guard. The point of his blade would shear through the soft fibre bundle musculature and carve into flesh and bone, severing Lucius’ sword arm clear from his body. Follow up strikes to the right arm and knees would finish the business of disabling him.

  The angle of the blade was exact. Krysithius funnelled his energy into the speed of the attack, making it a preternatural blur, nearly impossible to track. It was truly a perfect strike.

  Except Lucius wasn’t there.

  Ajennion’s blade cut only the thin smoke coiling through the air of the corridor, continuing to fly unerringly forwards along with the rest of Krysithius’ sword arm. Lucius had seen his attack coming, and rather than parrying or dodging it, he had chosen to show his brother just how effective the cut would have been by executing it himself.

  Flawlessly.

  Blood sprayed dark and free from the stump of Krysithius’ shoulder, drenching the wall and deck at his boots. Immediately his trans­human physiology laboured to staunch the haemorrhaging, while his armour plunged its last reserves of combat narcotics and pain nullifiers into his bloodstream and spinal column with a stinging chemical kiss. Krysithius did not hesitate, drawing the gladius sheathed at his shin.

  In an eye-blink, the short blade was spinning into the air behind him, along with the hand holding it. Blood soaked Krysithius’ cuirass as he looked down at his severed wrist. His eyes, wide with shock, flashed up.

  Lucius stood in
front of him, smoke clinging to his boots, as if he had never even moved. The only indication that he had was the Laeran Blade drawn in his left hand, its power field hissing and ­popping as blood cooked along its edge.

  Krysithius’ blood.

  ‘You know,’ said Lucius, as his lash uncoiled to the ground with a wet thud, ‘I rather liked the idea you had for me, my dear brother. Since it doesn’t seem that you will be needing it, do you mind if I borrow it?’

  Lucius’ movements were quicksilver like the flashing blink of lightning. A surgical backhanded cut sliced off Krysithius’ left leg at the knee in a shower of blood and the fountaining sparks of shorn ­servos and fibre bundles. The return strike cut his right at mid-thigh, the power field of the Laeran Blade flashing as its disruptor field disintegrated solid matter into crumbling ash with each strike.

  Krysithius crashed to the ground. One of the finest Palatine Blades to ever fight beneath the banner of the III Legion had been reduced to a ragged torso clad in broken armour, emptying what remained of his lifeblood onto the deck. All the while, Lucius’ face was a cold mask, not betraying the merest hint of emotion.

  This was not a duel fought for his pleasure, as it had been against the Red Centurion. This duel was about sending a message. This was a reminder to any of the Cohors Nasicae who had dared to think that Lucius the Eternal was anything but the greatest swordsman in the galaxy. That he was anything less than the first among brothers, their better and their master.

  The daemonic lash tore the air with an ear-splitting crack, stripping the flesh from the side of Krysithius’ face and smashing his head back into the deck. The swordsman rolled to his stomach, clutching at the deck with the handless stump of his remaining arm to drag himself away.

  ‘Crawl!’ Lucius roared. ‘Crawl, brother! Slither along until you find the spot where you want to die. It won’t be long now, until you will see what I have seen. Oblivion is waiting for you, and I will send you there!’

  Lucius’ words were punctuated by the crack of his lash. The snapping whip reverberated like gunfire down the bare metal of the corridor as it stripped away Krysithius’ splintered armour and pulled away the flesh beneath in tattered ribbons.

  Krysithius spat a mouthful of blood onto the deck. Wisps of steam curled from where it began eating into the iron, reeking of chlorine. He looked up, desperately searching for something, for anything, in the eyes of his brothers.

  He found nothing. Every warrior of the Cohors Nasicae wore the same blank dispassionate expression. Those few who deigned to meet his gaze seemed to look through and past him. Their eyes were not cold or hateful, just vacant. Unfocused.

  Numb.

  Lucius reared over Krysithius as he came to a halt, crashing back to the deck after slipping in the slick of his own lifeblood. The Eternal lowered the tip of the Laeran Blade, tapping it against his boot.

  ‘So, we end here after all.’ Lucius’ smile was back, but it was devoid of even the cruel mirth it had possessed before. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be giving you the chance to grovel this time, my dear brother. You won’t even get to die on your knees.’

  Krysithius choked out a ragged breath, blood spilling over his lips. He growled with exertion as he struggled to hook his arm around Lucius’ leg, fighting to rise. Lucius stomped down with his other boot, the ceramite-shod hoof smashing his brother back down to the deck.

  Lucius circled around Krysithius, pressing his knee down into his gut to keep him pinned.

  ‘Let’s see,’ murmured Lucius thoughtfully. ‘You’ll take my arms…’ He rapped Krysithius’ ravaged limbs with the flat of his sword. ‘You’ll take my legs…’ He did the same with the amputated stumps branching from the legionary’s waist.

  ‘What else was there?’ Lucius drummed a quick tattoo with his fingers against his chin, as if lost in thought. ‘There was something, wasn’t there, brother?’

  Lucius’ eyes lit up. ‘Ah!’ Cruelty had edged back into his features as he leaned down close over Krysithius to whisper into his ear. ‘I remember now.’

  Lucius set his sword down on the deck and grasped the back of Krysithius’ skull, holding it still as he pistoned his other fist between his brother’s lips. Teeth snapped and wrenched free from his gums as Lucius sank his hand in to the wrist. The slippery length of muscle snapped taut as he grabbed hold of it, resisting for a moment before tearing free.

  Lucius stood, looking down upon Krysithius as the anguished warrior thrashed and howled in an expanding pool of blood, spit and vomit. He opened his hand, allowing the twitching red shape he had pulled out of his brother to slide from his palm to the deck with a soft wet slap.

  ‘My tongue.’

  Krysithius spasmed. His face was a crimson mask, his mouth reduced to a gory maw of torn lips and broken teeth. His back arched and rounded as he aspirated on his own blood.

  ‘I know exactly where you are going,’ said Lucius, gathering up the Laeran Blade and gently cleaning it before returning the sword to its sheath. ‘Of everything I have experienced, all of the torments of the material universe and our wars within the Eye, nothing compares to it. It is the one place where even those of the Legions should feel fear.’

  Slowly, Lucius raised a boot over his brother’s face.

  ‘You will have an eternity to learn why.’

  The splintering of bone echoed across the corridor, fading after a few moments as silence reasserted itself. Lucius the Eternal looked down at the ruin he had transformed Krysithius into, the brother he had so thoroughly destroyed, before turning his gaze to his warriors.

  ‘Take what you want from him, and bring whatever is left to me.’

  I.XI

  The sound of laughter turned Direnc’s head. He caught the vague impression of someone who had been watching him from behind a veil of branches before they disappeared in a quivering rush of ­foliage. Slowly, he rose from the silken couch, peering around the lush garden to find the source of the sound that still rang harmoniously in the distance.

  Laughter was not something that was entirely foreign to Direnc, even in a life lived as a slave to the Eaters of Worlds. That being said though, in almost all of his experience it had been a cruel, animalistic thing, barked and ululated from his demigod masters or hissed from the lips of killers and the inhuman things that dwelt deep within the lightless decks of the Pit Cur. The things that laughed in Direnc’s life more often than not expressed their joy through blood-stringed jaws.

  This sound was nothing like that. This laughter was closer to the sweet song of the birds than the harsh bellows of his former overlords. It was lyrical, honeyed, and it brought a warm, honest smile unbidden to Direnc’s lips.

  A trail of smooth grey stones warmed by the sunlight led Direnc on a winding path through the garden as he followed the slight sounds of rustling grass. The soft sway of hanging vines opened before the slave like a curtain, revealing a rolling hill crested by a deep green meadow that stretched all the way to the horizon. A breeze rolled over the long grass and wildflowers, gently stirring ripples across them like the waves bending the surface of an emerald ocean.

  Direnc finally saw where the laughter was coming from. A group of slender figures danced and frolicked through the meadow, the silver silk of their robes flowing behind them like shimmering angels’ wings. One of their number was running and skipping to join them, sparing Direnc a glance over her shoulder with bright green eyes.

  The slave had never seen anything, or anyone, so beautiful. The humanity he had been born into was a crude, unwashed thing, swollen into brutishness by alchemical muscle enhancers and starved of natural light and warmth. Direnc stopped for a moment at the crest of the hill, lost in the effortless grace of the dancing figures, before he began to walk down towards them.

  The hull of the Diadem shivered as a churning wave of immaterial force broke against its flank. Now safely wreathed in the fully restored protect
ion of her Geller field, the tide boiled around a capsule of gold-and-azure energy, its caustic wake doing little more than ­buffeting the vessel slightly from the course it had been drifting along. The engine arrays of the ancient strike cruiser lit, and she smoothly came about on jets of bright flame from her manoeuvring thrusters before sailing clear of the building storm.

  Clarion had received no report of daemonic incursion before her crew had managed to reactivate the Geller field. She had heard nothing from Lucius or any of the other legionaries since he had departed from the bridge. But she could sense the lingering trace of spice upon the air. Blood had been shed upon her decks. The child could feel it as surely as her own bones.

  One of the Cohors Nasicae had died, and he had not died well. Clarion ran a dark tongue across her teeth. Another feast cast into the Sea of Souls.

  She had been given no course to set, no destination or target to guide her beautiful warship towards as unerringly as a spear of silver and violet. Running her fingers across the runeboard pads built into the armrests of her throne, Clarion panned the angle of the oculus viewscreen that dominated the forward wall of her bridge. The view ground downwards, and she watched the spine of the Diadem stretch out ahead of her in all of its gothic, crenellated glory.

  Adorning the tip of every spire, every tower and minaret stood an army of statues waiting in a silent, airless vigil. They were all of roughly the same shape, sinuous creatures of slender and seductive lines, while at the very same moment horrifying, pregnant with the promise of untold suffering delivered by oversized claws and barbed talons. Some reflected the unholy light of the Eye with sheens of bright silver, while others offered a dim mirror from bodies of smoked glass or creamy marble. Many crouched like perched gargoyles, most stood to their full, spindly height, but every one of the nearly thirteen hundred statues stared unblinking at the Diadem’s bridge.