ASHES OF PROSPERO Read online

  +I cannot countenance it. The Magnus I knew was a master of study, of creation not destruction. If he does as you say, it is to build something grander than already exists.+

  ‘He is master no more, sorcerer. He is a slave, though he would pretend otherwise. A figment of change for change’s sake, caught in the unending ploys of the Great Architect – Tzeentch. I do not doubt that he deludes himself that he strives for a cause, but any meaning behind his actions is only vanity.’

  +Tell me, bone-reader, what happened to Prospero? I can feel it still, a dead place, the libraries silent, the great precincts hollow of life.+

  ‘You know better than I what happened at Prospero. I have only read of the destruction. I am sure you witnessed it.’

  +Only Tizca survived, protected by the kine shield of my order. Our greatest city, the largest repository of our knowledge, held safe by the wardship of our Raptorae’s psychic might.+

  ‘Tizca was purged also. It is a ruin now, the carcass picked clean over ten thousand years. Good riddance also.’

  Izzakar remained silent, his usual belligerence suffocated by the scale of the Thousand Sons’ loss. Njal felt nothing but contempt for the former Librarian, and knew well that all that had happened to his Legion had not only been deserved, it had been ordained by the Allfather. No other justification was required.

  Even so… Izzakar had been locked in the Portal Maze since the Burning of Prospero. He knew nothing of what had happened after. The Siege of Terra and the mutation of Magnus’ Legion were a mystery to him. The final act of Corruption, hinted at in the oldest sagas but never fully understood, had taken place after the sorcerer’s demise.

  ‘You said “sorcerer”, Lord of Runes,’ Majula said suddenly, jolting the Stormcaller from his reverie. ‘What exactly do you carry inside your thoughts?’

  ‘A remnant only,’ Njal replied curtly. ‘An echo of a dead man that has not yet faded.’

  The Rune Priest expected some retort from Izzakar, as he had been goading him on purpose, but no comment was forthcoming. Instead, Njal felt a knot of confusion in the deepest recesses of his consciousness.

  ‘I do not expect our transit into the Prospero system to be as fraught as our departure from Fenris,’ he told Majula, turning to leave. ‘We should be there within a few more ship-days. The system is empty, undefended. Magnus abandoned it long ago and has shown no interest since. Despite that, we will follow all normal precautions for entry into hostile space.’

  +I would not be so certain that Prospero stands unguarded.+

  ‘There is nothing left there to protect.’

  +And still you head there. Do you think it is coincidence that your ship was beset by such opposition the moment it broke warp space?+

  ‘Magnus bargained much with his infernal master and the daemonic hordes. Our system and many others were ravaged by armies of the warp-spawned. It is no surprise that they linger still on the boundaries of the Wolf King’s realm.’

  +Nonsense. You cannot possibly imagine the will required to sustain that kind of intense activity in one place. Such rapid manifestation, at the exact point and moment where you translated, is virtually impossible. Whatever the mass of corrupted energy around your world, the odds of encountering that kind of resistance purely by chance are astronomical.+

  ‘You think they were waiting for us? That is even more impossible. Only a few days earlier I had no intent of leaving the system.’

  +Days, years, yesterday, tomorrow, does any of that matter here? Prophecy is second nature to the Sons of Magnus. To those of us that truly mastered the warp and its ways the future, present and past are interchangeable.+

  ‘That arrogance again. You mastered nothing, only self-delusion. The Prosperines were undone by their lack of humility, punished by fate and the warp for their overconfidence.’

  +You dismiss me so easily and level accusations of overconfidence in a single breath. The hypocrisy of the Wolf King truly lives on in his misguided dog-sons.+

  ‘Choose every word carefully, sorcerer. Each slur you level upon the Sons of the Wolf will be revisited on you ten-fold. Do not forget what happened at Prospero.’

  ‘Stormcaller!’ Majula’s sharp tone of rebuke shocked Njal into attention. It had been an age, and a different life, since anyone had spoken to him that way. His angry retort died on his lips when he noticed the small arcs of energy that crackled between his splayed fingers.

  +Control, reader-of-entrails. Control beats brute force every time.+

  ‘I shall leave you,’ Njal said stiffly, nodding his head in respect to the Navigator. ‘Do you require my assistance for the next transition?’

  ‘I think…’ Majula shook her head. ‘That will not be necessary, Lord of Runes.’

  +You are fast becoming a liability. She knows it also.+

  Njal said nothing and strode away with what little dignity he could muster.

  Despite the assertions of Izzakar, the approaches to the Prospero system offered no great threat. They were, if anything, placid. This in itself was cause for Majula to ask Njal to join her again.

  The growing presence of the Great Rift subtly churned the stomach, a dull throb in the gut only just discernible. Against the melange of storms, one area stood out. Prospero’s locale was a glittering swirl centred on what had been the home world of Magnus.

  +Our wards still work after all of this time,+ crowed Izzakar. +Even after our death our legacy lives on.+

  ‘You are wrong,’ Njal told him. ‘Everything was dismantled, torn down by the warriors of the silent sisterhood. This is new.’

  ‘The Planet of Sorcerers, Lord of Runes,’ offered Majula. ‘It is close at hand, dragged through from the othervoid into the real universe. This is only the wake of its passing – the vortex left by such massive transition. All energy has been drained from the zone in the aftermath of the trauma.’

  +Intriguing. What is this world she speaks of?+

  ‘When Magnus and his traitorous brothers fled justice at the hands of the loyal, they took up new domains in the Eye of Terror. The Crimson King crafted a world of darkest magic and vile daemomancy.’

  +You throw around words whose meaning I think you do not fully understand.+

  ‘It makes no difference to what we need to do,’ said Njal, irritated by the sorcerer’s constant distractions. ‘Navigator, calculate the Mandeville point and prepare for transition.’

  ‘There is no Mandeville point.’ Majula slipped on her eyeguard and turned away from the control column. She looked exhausted, sagging from fatigue, a tic in her left eye. ‘The warp-ripple has washed away any graviometric interference from real space.’

  +Fool, why did you not realise that?+

  ‘How close can we approach?’

  ‘Virtually to orbit, Lord of Runes. If I time the jump properly, we can bleed off our speed as we break through.’

  ‘And if you don’t time it properly?’

  ‘We might overshoot by a few days.’ Majula looked away, a sign of guilt.

  ‘Or…?’

  ‘There is a very small, exceptionally minute chance that we could throw ourselves into the gravity well of Prospero itself, Lord of Runes.’

  ‘Crash. The word you are looking for is “crash”, Navigator.’

  She nodded, still avoiding eye contact.

  Njal was suspicious of anything that made his life easier and he considered ordering Majula to make the real space jump as normal. Against this, he weighed fourteen days or so, the time it would take to travel in-system by conventional means. Fourteen days fewer he would spend with Izzakar burrowed into his soul.

  ‘Do it,’ he told the Navigator. ‘Take us as far in as you dare.’

  ‘Only three?’ Arjac scowled at Aldacrel.

  ‘I can only get three of them to work.’ The Iron Priest’s reply was more accusation than apology, as though it was the hearthegn’s fault that the Longclaw’s already small drop pod cascade was compromised. He turned to Njal, who glowered at the line of dro
p pods that hung on their loading gantry like mechanical fruit. ‘What with the Geller field repairs, modifying the launch bays to re-arm the Thunderhawks and… I have lots of other things to fix. This is the best I can do.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done all that you can,’ said the Rune Priest.

  Aldacrel’s servo-arm whined out from his backpack and affectionately patted one of the metal struts holding up the cascade roof.

  ‘It was meant to be going to Forstex Six for heavy refit when we took it. This ship’s got as much fight in it as those on board, I’ll give it that. But three drop pods are the best I can do if you want to launch now.’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Njal, cocking a glance towards Arjac.

  The champion thought about it, recalling the number and disposition of thralls in the force, as well as the Stormriders under Valgarthr and his own Wolf Guard. He sucked a breath in through his teeth like a whaler about to haggle on the price of blubber.

  ‘We need to do it in two waves,’ he said eventually, rubbing his bearded chin. ‘I won’t assume the target is undefended, though this world’s been deserted for millennia. Not even scavengers bother coming now. But it is hostile territory. We’ll use gunships and drop pods for the brothers to make a concentrated strike into Tizca to create a forward zone. Then we’ll send some thralls to add numbers for cordon duty. The secondary drop should be at the ruins of the starport, plenty of room to land more craft there. We can use saviour boats to deploy more thralls down quickly. From the port, they’ll form a relief column into the city.’

  ‘Timing?’

  ‘The drop pods take half the time of a gunship to land, so we’ll send the Thunderhawks first and make the drop about twenty minutes later. It should be near-simultaneous arrival over Tizca.’

  ‘I will concentrate our efforts on boosting the augur array to have a closer look at the dead city,’ offered Aldacrel. ‘There’s four torpedoes in the bays, though only one launch tube. Everything else is point defence or void-to-void, no bombardment cannon or lances.’

  ‘No. No pre-bombardment,’ said Arjac. ‘Surprise and speed serve better than firepower. Anyone on the surface isn’t going to be in one place to be hit, and a torpedo strike will just give them warning that we are coming.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Njal. His expression soured. ‘I have tried to divine any presence on the surface but whatever force disturbed the Portal Maze is also blanketing the area with psychic static. There should be nobody there, but I would not swear to it. And there is always the hope that the Thirteenth are somewhere in the city. I’d rather not torpedo them if they are.’

  The reminder was timely. Arjac had become so focused on the detail of the mission he had almost forgotten the objective. He was a far better bodyguard than force commander, that much he knew.

  ‘Launch in one hour?’ suggested Arjac.

  ‘One hour for the gunships, second wave on your signal,’ said Njal.

  ‘I need to get working,’ Aldacrel told them and headed down the gantry joined by his gaggle of thralls and servitors. Njal made to move the other way but Arjac stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  ‘You will be in the second wave, Stormcaller.’

  ‘Why so?’ asked the psyker, eyes narrowing in displeasure.

  Arjac did not wish to tell the Rune Priest that he could not be trusted during the most critical phase of the operation. Should his traitorous passenger take control the whole expedition would be jeopardised. He could not lie though, so settled for sharing his secondary reasoning.

  ‘There is no mission without you, Stormcaller. No entry to the Portal Maze, no recovering of our lost forebrothers. You are too important to place in that much danger.’

  Njal watched Arjac for a few seconds, gauging his words, though there was no sign of argument from the Rune Priest. He just nodded and then walked away. When he was out of earshot – a considerable distance for a Space Marine – the hearthegn let out a shuddering sigh of irritation.

  Secrets, he thought. Secrets kill.

  Arjac checked his chronometer.

  ‘Ninety seconds to touchdown,’ he voxed to the other couple of Wolf Guard in their jury-rigged drop harnesses. Aldacrel had dared the wrath of the Machine-God by modifying a pair of drop pods so that each could accommodate a trio of the bulky Terminator suits, and in the third were ten Stormrider veterans. Somewhere beyond the shaking hull a duo of Thunderhawks plunged groundwards as well, to deploy more packs of veterans with Valgarthr in command, and a contingent from the thralls.

  Rockfist looked across the ruddy interior and his gaze met Ingvarr’s, who gave a reassuring nod. To the right, Red Ulfar dozed fitfully, his snores nearly lost in the rumble of the rapid descent.

  ‘No ground activity detected,’ came the voice of the augur officer aboard the Longclaw. ‘Negative reports from gunship surveyors. The dropzone is uncontested.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ muttered Ingvarr. With a deft flick of his deactivated power fist, he slipped the magazine into his storm bolter with a loud click. The noise was like an alarm to Ulfar, who roused from his slumber with a wordless grumble.

  ‘One minute to drop,’ Arjac intoned, watching the declining countdown in the corner of the sensorium. The others could see it too, synchronised across the feedback band, but it concentrated the mind to hear it spoken. ‘Final calibrations and checks.’

  The pod was yawing a little in a crosswind, puffs of retro-adjusters steering them back towards the target zone. He knew this only from the reports scrolling across the screen just above his head – his armour compensated for nearly all motion and pressure change, immunising him against any sensation of movement.

  Arjac had picked a broad, walled area that might have been a garden space originally, but was now a flat area of lifeless earth. It was a broad enough space to accommodate the landing, an almost ideal target for orbital insertion just a kilometre from the centre of Tizca. Linking into the telemetry of the pod he saw that they were almost exactly over the centre of the target.

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  He pressed the stud of Foehammer and the head glowed with potential destruction. A similar check of the anvil shield rewarded him with a glimmer of power field. Opposite, Ulfar and Ingvarr completed their weapons doctrine and signalled their readiness.

  Even Terminator armour could not hide the near-instant increase in weight when the lander jets fired. The occupants underwent a retardation of velocity that would have crushed the spine of a normal human, the blood pressure changes putting them into immediate unconsciousness if it didn’t kill them outright.

  ‘For the Allfather,’ whispered Ulfar, proffering his powerfist. Arjac and Ingvarr echoed the pledge, extending their own weapons in salute to one another.

  Despite the aggressive braking blasts, they hit the ground at considerable speed, the hull shuddering, the screech of impact dampeners like the tear of tortured metal. Explosive releases fired, throwing down the disembarkation ramps, flooding the interior with harsh sunlight. The drop harnesses snapped upwards and outwards like splayed ribcages, slamming hard against the pod’s roof and sides.

  ‘Time to fight,’ laughed Ingvarr, pushing himself out of his alcove.

  The landing was anti-climactic. As the augurs had attested, Tizca was deserted. Thudding down the ramps of the drop pods and gunships, the Space Wolves found themselves amid a metropolis of broken crystal pyramids and toppled cloisters. A few creepers trailed from cracks between the flags underfoot. Spindly, thorny things clawed an existence out of the scant moisture in the air. When the kine shield had finally collapsed, the firestorm that had incinerated the rest of Prospero had engulfed the city in its conflagration. Ten thousand years later the utter destruction unleashed still left a scar upon the world’s ecosystem.

  ‘Allfather’s throne, it’s quiet,’ said Sven, approaching from the second drop pod a few dozen metres north of Arjac. Beyond them the Stormriders dispersed from the third while dust kicked up from attitude jets obsc
ured the landing Thunderhawks a hundred metres to the west.

  It was not just quiet, it was silent. There were no birds or animals, not even the buzz of flies or scurry of crawling insects. While the Wolf Guard pack formed on Arjac, the hum of war-plates seemed an intrusion into the sepulchral stillness.

  A desultory breeze lifted a haze of dust across the white walls bounding the former park, and past them the high sun blazed from the reflective flanks of the pyramid-temples, broken in places by the dark wounds of ancient battle. Arjac could imagine how glorious the city must have been in its highest might – a glory that had not saved it from the Allfather’s wrath as delivered by the Rout and their allies.

  ‘Augur scans negative,’ Valgarthr reported, emerging from another billowing cloud set into motion by the rising gunships. ‘I’ve sent the Thunderhawks back to join the next wave.’

  Clad in blue-grey trousers and doublets under burnished copper armour, a platoon of thralls followed, several of their number carrying disassembled heavy weapons and tripods. Under the instructions of their kaerls, they set up a perimeter around the drop pods, their heavy weapons trained on the empty gateways that broke the line of the park’s encircling wall.

  ‘It is forty-five minutes to orbit and back again,’ said Arjac. ‘We should secure the route to the objective while we await the next wave.’

  The others turned as he lifted his finger towards the highest artificial peak in the city, its fractured summit obscured by scudding wisps of cloud. The Pyramid of Photep. Once it had been the centre of the cult of Prospero. The site of the Space Wolves’ greatest and most grievous victory.

  ‘There,’ said the hearthegn. ‘Where the Wolf King shamed the Cyclops.’

  Njal had not known quite what to expect of Tizca. The old sagas had painted a picture of utter devastation, a clash of such magnitude that it had been worthy of the battles of Fenrisian myth.

  The reality, as Njal looked out of the armourplas window of the descending Thunderhawk, seemed far more mundane.

  The great capital of Magnus was most certainly a ruin, but bereft of all drama and conflict. The precisely laid streets and plazas were clear to see from this altitude, dappled by cloud cover across the pale sunlight. The pyramid temples that had once been polished to a pure reflection, now smoke-stained and broken, the gaping holes in their vertiginous flanks like windows into a dark dimension within. Craters marked the walls of the great canal, long emptied into the sea that had bounded the city to the east and north, itself now a waterless expanse.