The Flight of the Eisenstein (12 page)

Andus nodded to the other Astartes. 'Brother Rahl does. He has once again been proven wrong and it no doubt chafes upon him.'

Rahl finally bared his teeth in mild annoyance. 'Don't make me hurt you, old man.'

Hakur rolled his eyes. 'And what of you, Meric? Where have you been?'

The question was a mild one, but Rahl saw a fractional flicker of tension in the Apothecary's eyes. At my business, Andus, little more than that.' Voyen quickly turned the conversation away from him. 'So, Pyr, I trust you are ready for the coming fight? I think the score is in my favour still, yes?'

He nodded. Rahl and Voyen had a casual competition between them as to which man would take a kill first on any given mission. 'Only combatants count, remember? That last one was only a servitor.'

'Gun-servitor,' corrected Voyen. 'It would have killed me if I had let it.' He looked around. '1 believe we will have ample chance to test the mettle of these defectors on Isstvan. There's to be a multi-stage offensive, first a landing to deny the monitor stations on the outermost world. Then on to the inner planets for an assault in full.'

Hakur's lip curled. 'You're very well informed. Captain Garro has not returned from the Warmaster's barge and yet already you know the details of the mission.'

Voyen hesitated. 'It's common enough knowledge.' His tone shifted, becoming more guarded.

'Is it?' Rahl sensed something amiss. 'Who told you, brother?'

'Does it matter?' the Apothecary said defensively. 'The information came to me. I thought you would wish to know, but if you would rather remain unapprised-'

That is not what he said,' Andus noted. 'Come, Meric, where did you learn these things? Someone in the infirmary babbling under the influence of pain nullifiers, perhaps, or a talkative astropath?'

Rahl became aware that the rest of the men in the room had fallen silent and were watching the exchange. Even Garro's housecarl was there, observing. Voyen saw Kaleb too and shot him a frosty glare.

'I asked you a question, brother,' said Hakur, and this time it was in the tone of voice he used on the battlefield, one accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Voyen's jaw hardened. 'I can't say' He stepped around the veteran and took a few paces towards his arming alcove.

Hakur caught his arm and stopped him. 'What is it you have in your hand?'

'Nothing of your concern, sergeant.'

The elder Astartes was easily twice the Apothecary's age, yet for all those decades Hakur's martial skills were deft and undimmed. He easily took Voyen's wrist and applied pressure to a nerve cluster, trapping his hand. Meric's fingers uncurled of their own accord and there in his palm was a mottled brass coin.

'What is this?' Hakur demanded in a low voice.

'You know what it is!' Voyen snapped back. 'Don't play me for a fool.'

The dull disc bore the imprint of the Legion's sigil. A lodge medal,' breathed Rahl. You're in the lodges? Since when?'

'I can't say!' Voyen retorted, shaking off Hakur's grip and walking to the alcove where his sparse collection of personal effects were kept. 'Don't ask me anything else.'

You know the battle-captain's feelings on this matter,' said Andus. 'He refutes any clandestine gatherings-'

'He
refutes,' Meric interrupted. 'He does, not I. If Captain Garro wishes to stay beyond the fraternity of the lodges, then that is his choice, and yours too if you wish to follow him. But I do not. I am a member.' He blew out a breath. 'There. It is said.'

Decius was on his feet. We are all part of the Seventh,' he growled, 'and the company's command cadre at that! Garro sets the example we should follow, without question!'

'If he would take the time to listen, he would understand.' Meric shook his head and gestured with the medal. 'You would understand that this is not some kind of secret society, it's just a place where men can meet and talk freely'

'That seems so,' noted Sendek. 'From what you have implied, in this lodge it appears that even the most sensitive of military information is bandied about without restraint'

Voyen shook his head angrily. 'It's not like that at all. Don't twist my meaning!'

'You must end your membership, Meric,' said Hakur. 'Swear it now and we'll speak no more of this conversation.'

'I won't.' He gripped the coin tightly. 'You all know me. We are battle-brothers! I've healed every one of you, saved the lives of some, even! I am Meric Voyen, your friend and comrade in arms. Do you really think that I would take part in something seditious?' He snorted. 'Trust me, if you saw the faces of the men who were there, you'd understand that it's you and Garro who are in the minority!'

'What Grulgor and Typhon do with their companies is their own lookout,' added Decius.

'And the rest!' Voyen replied. 'I am far from the only soldier of the Seventh in the association!'

'No,' insisted Hakur.

'I would never lie to you, and if holding this token makes you think any less of me, then...' After a long moment he bowed his head, deflated. 'Then perhaps you are not the kinsmen I thought you were.'

When Voyen looked up again someone else had joined the other men in the chamber.

Rahl heard a razor-edge of anger in Captain Garro's voice as he spoke a single command. 'Give me the room.'

When they were alone and Kaleb sealed the door behind him, Garro turned a hard stare on his subordinate. His mailed fingers tensed into fists.

'I never heard you enter,' Voyen muttered. 'How much did you hear?'

'You do not refute,' he replied. 'I stood outside in the corridor a while before I entered.'

'Huh,' the Apothecary gave a dry laugh. 'I thought your housecarl was the spy'

What Kaleb speaks of to me is guided only by his conscience. I do not task him.'

'Then he and I are alike.'

Garro looked away. *You say then that it is your principles that made you join the lodge, is that it?'

'Aye. I am the senior healer for the Seventh Company. It's my duty to know the true feelings of the men who are part of it. Sometimes there are things a man will tell his lodge-mate that he would not tell his Apothecary.' Voyen stared down at the deck. 'Am I to assume that you will have me posted to another company in light of this disclosure?'

Some part of Garro expected himself to explode with fury, but all he felt now was disappointment. 'I eschew the lodge and then I learn a most trusted friend within my inner circle is a part of it. Such a thing might make me seem weak or short-sighted to others.'

'No,' insisted the Astartes, 'Lord, please know, I did not choose this in order to undermine you! It was only... the right choice for Meric Voyen.'

Garro was silent for a few moments. 'We have been brothers in warfare for decades, over thousands of battlefields. You are a fine warrior, and a better healer. I would not have had you join my cadre otherwise. But this... you kept this from us all, and made our comradeship cheap. If you stay under my command, Meric, you will not find it easy to earn back the trust that you have lost today' He met the other man's gaze. 'Go or stay. Make the choice that is right for Meric Voyen.'

'If I wish to remain, will my departure from the lodge be a condition of that, lord?'

The captain shook his head. 'I won't force you to disassociate yourself. You're still my battle-brother, even if your decisions are sometimes not in line with mine.' Garro stepped forward and offered Voyen his hand. 'But I will have a pledge from you. Promise me, here and now, that if the lodge ever compels you to turn from the face of the Emperor of Man, you will destroy that medal and reject them.'

The Apothecary took Garro's hand. 'I swear it, lord. On Terra itself, I swear it.'

The matter dealt with for the moment, Garro gathered his men back together and briefed them on the battle plans the Warmaster had outlined. By his example, not a single harsh word was said to Voyen, but the Apothecary kept silent and to the edge of things. No voice was raised in question as to why

Voyen still stood with them, but Garro saw reservations in the eyes of Decius, Rahl and the others.

When it was done, Garro left his dress wargear to Kaleb's attention and took his own council. So many things had come and gone in so short a time. It seemed like only moments ago that he had been looking over attack simulations for the raid on the jorgall world-ship, now the Legiones Astartes massed for the first hammer-blow strike on Isstvan Extremis, and Garro saw conflict in the heart of his own company.

Had he made the wrong choice in letting Voyen remain? His mind moved back to the conversation with Mortarion before the war council, where questions of the lodges had risen as well. It troubled the captain that he could not determine an easy path through these thoughts. At times he wondered if he were at fault, holding firmly to a conservative course, keeping the tradition and heart of the Legion alive while time moved on and things changed.

Yes, things
were
changing. The shift of mood here on
Endurance
was slight, but visible to his trained senses, and aboard the Warmaster's ship, it was more obvious still. Bleak emotions gathered at the edges of his thoughts like distant storm clouds. He could not shake the sensation that something malign was waiting out there, gathering strength and biding its time.

And so Garro did what he had made into a quiet personal habit, in order to clear his mind and find focus for the coming battle. High up atop the
Endurance's
dorsal hull lay the oval dome of the ship's observatorium, a space put aside so that naval crew might be able to take emergency star fix sightings should the vessel's cogitators become inoperative. It also served a purely ornamental function, although there were few among the Death Guard who ever used it for so trivial a purpose.

Garro dimmed all the glow-globes in the chamber and seated himself at the control console. The operator chair shifted back and reclined on quiet hydraulics. Presently, the battle-captain was tilted so he could take in the unfettered sweep of the starscape.

Isstvan's blue-white sun was a bright glow off in the lower quadrant, attenuated by a localised polarisation in the augmented armourglass. He looked away from it and let the blackness surround him. Gradually, tension eased from the knots in his muscles. Garro felt adrift in the ocean of stars, cupped in the bubble of atmosphere. He saw past the silver flashes of ship hulls, out into the deep void, and not for the first time, he looked and wondered where home was.

Officially, the home world of the XIV Legion was Barbarus, a cloud-wreathed sphere near the edge of the Gothic Sector. It was from that troubled world that most of the Death Guard's number originated, men like Grulgor and Typhon, Decius and Sendek, even Kaleb. Garro had learned to have deference and respect for the planet and its testing nature, but it would never be home to him.

Garro had been born on Terra and drawn up into the Legiones Astartes before men had even known the name of Barbarus. In those years the XIV Legion had gone by a different title, and they had no pri-march but the Emperor himself. Garro swelled with pride to remember that time. They had been the Dusk Raiders, so known because of their signature tactic of attacking a foe at nightfall. Then, they had worn armour without the green trim of the current Legion. The wargear of the Dusk Raiders was the dull white of old marble, but with their right arm and shoulders coloured in a deep, glistening crimson. The symbology of the armour showed their foes what they truly were – the Emperor's red right hand, the relentless and unstoppable. Many enemies had thrown down their weapons the moment the sun dipped beneath the horizon, rather than dare to fight them.

But that too had changed. When the Emperor's done-sons, the great primarchs, had been sundered from his side and scattered across the galaxy, the Dusk Raiders joined their brother Legions and their master in the Great Crusade that began the Age of the Imperium. Garro had been there, centuries past.

It did not seem so long ago, and yet there were countless years of time measured by Terran clocks that he had lost in the confusion of the warp, in cryogenic stasis and through the strange physics of near-light speed travel. Garro had been there as the Emperor crossed the galaxy in search of his star-lost children – Sanguinius, Ferrus, Guilliman, Magnus and the rest. With each reuniting, the Lord of Mankind had gifted his sons with command of the forces that had been created in their image. When at last the Emperor came to Barbarus and discovered the gaunt warrior foundling leading its oppressed people, he had located the avatar of the XIV Legion.

On Barbarus, where Mortarion had come to rest after falling through the chaotic turmoil of a warp storm, the boy-primarch found a planet where the human colonists were ground beneath the heel of a clan of mutant warlords. He grew up to fight them and liberate the commoners, creating his own army of steadfast warriors to lead the way into the poisonous heights where the warlords hid. These men Mortarion named the Death Guard.

So it was written, that when at last the Emperor and Mortarion met and defeated the dark master of the warlords, Barbarus was free and the primarch accepted a place in his father's Crusade at the head of the XIV Legion. Mortarion's first words to his army were carved in a granite arch over the airlock gate of the battle barge
Reaper's Scythe
in memory of the moment. He had come at the Emperor's bidding with the elite of his Barbarun cohort at his side and hundreds more on the way. Garro had been there, as nothing more than a line Astartes, when he heard his new primarch speak.

'You are my unbroken blades,' he told them. 'You are the Death Guard.' And with those words the Dusk Raiders were no more. Things changed.

On the day of Mortarion's coronation as primarch, a good majority of the XIV Legion had been of Garro's stock, men born on Terra or within the confines of the Sol system, but slowly that number had dwindled, and as new recruits joined the Death Guard fold they came only from Barbarus. Now, as the Thirty-First Millennium turned about its axis, there was only a comparative handful of Terrans in the Legion. In his blackest moments Nathaniel imagined a time when there would be none of his kinsmen left among the XIV, and with their deaths the traditions of the old Dusk Raiders would finally fade away. He feared that moment, for when it came to pass something of the Legion's noble character would die as well.