TWO

  FROM WILL COMETH FAITH

  X

  Dumbfounded, Norroll watched Traxel immolate the Iron Warrior’s remains.

  ‘Tempestor Traxel!’ Fennech snarled, his heretofore icy demeanour slipping in light of Traxel’s inexplicable action. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  The Traitor Astartes’ torso had burst open, the surface layer of iron glowing where it skinned plates of shattered ceramite. Thick clouds of steam rose from the gaping chest cavity, meat and organs laid open and roasted by the plasma rounds that had struck it at point-blank range. The slightly sweet scent of cooked flesh mixed with an unidentifiable spiced odour and the tang of burnt metal and ozone, strikingly noxious in its combination as it permeated the control room.

  ‘Tempestor Traxel!’ Fennech repeated angrily. He raised his bolt pistol but did not take aim. ‘Explain yourself!’

  Traxel drew a deep breath of the reeking steam that boiled from the Traitor Astartes’ splayed chest. He closed his eyes and remained in place, stock-still and silent, for nearly a minute as he breathed in the ruin of his enemy. Without a word, he turned on his heel and marched towards Norroll.

  ‘That went better than expected,’ Norroll said as the Tempestor approached.

  Traxel’s right arm jabbed forward with blinding speed, striking Norroll in the mouth with the pommel of his chainsword. Even with the protection of his faceguard, the blow hit the recon trooper so unexpectedly and so hard that it dropped him to the ground. Traxel placed a furious kick into Norroll’s ribs, sending him sprawling, then drew back and kicked him again.

  Now Fennech took aim. ‘That is enough, Tempestor,’ he said. His icy composure had returned, his words delivered with the deathly solemnity of a promise.

  ‘Tempestus Trooper Norroll, stand at attention!’ Traxel barked, heedless of Fennech’s threat.

  Norroll rose to his feet in unconscious obedience, snapping to attention with the reflexive speed of one whose entire lifetime was filled with dreadful punishments for any real or imagined failure or act of noncompliance.

  ‘The rest of you will submit to Medicae-Adept Daviland, or requisition supplies with Trooper Durlo if you require no aid,’ Traxel said. ‘You are dismissed.’

  The Scions filed from the control room without comment, leaving Norroll with Traxel and Fennech.

  ‘You as well, Tempestor,’ Fennech said without looking at him.

  Traxel glared at the commissar with vitriolic hatred. Norroll knew the commissar had killed men for less.

  To his astonishment, Fennech did nothing.

  The Tempestor rapidly regained his composure, his fury bleeding away beneath the yawning muzzle of Fennech’s bolt pistol. For a moment, Traxel appeared equally nonplussed by the commissar’s inaction. He masked his confusion quickly, but it had been enough for Norroll to notice.

  Traxel sheathed his chainsword and holstered his plasma pistol, then turned with ingrained obedience and stalked from the room, leaving Norroll, to his horror, alone with Fennech.

  ‘Everything I have read about you is true,’ Fennech said to Norroll once the Tempestor left. ‘Yet those reports do you no justice.’ He leaned against a desk and crossed his arms, holding his right elbow in the palm of his oversized left fist. ‘But do not misapprehend – this isn’t about you, Trooper Norroll. It’s about him.’

  Norroll stood as if rooted to the spot. His muscles tensed painfully – his blood seemed to boil in his veins as his guts froze. He struggled to keep his knees from trembling as all the rotes he had ever learned for calm trickled from his grasp.

  Fennech appeared not to notice Norroll’s discomfort. Lost in thought, he picked up a broken runepad that dangled over the edge of the desk by a length of black wire. He turned it over in his hand, examining it as if the gaps in the keyboard might somehow hold a message, then set it down on the desk behind him. ‘There’s something very wrong with you, though, isn’t there, Trooper Norroll? And with Bissot’s maternal hero worship and self-destructive tendencies, and Durlo’s tics and kleptomania – yet I would hazard they are both progressing better than you. If they survive this deployment, I expect they should be restored to regular duty with full honours.’

  Norroll stared straight ahead, unbreathing and unblinking. His vision blurred and he nearly collapsed to a sudden light-headedness.

  Fennech stepped away from Norroll, who risked a gasp of breath. ‘Why am I telling you this?’ he sighed, seemingly to himself. ‘You have spent two years in an eradicant, and somehow managed to survive it all. Do you know what they say about you back at the regiment, Trooper Norroll? “What’s wrong with him?” they say. “What has he done to be permanently assigned to an eradicant?” What are they talking about, Tempestus Trooper Norroll? What is wrong with you? And why does Tempestor Traxel tolerate it?’

  ‘Permission to speak, commissar,’ Norroll said.

  ‘The questions weren’t rhetorical.’

  ‘I’m reckless, sir. Headstrong. I take risks beyond what are required for mission accomplishment and I question orders.’

  Fennech shook his head. ‘Behaviour is correctable by means both subtle and gross. The underlying issue is not so simple.’

  ‘What is the underlying issue, sir?’

  ‘Beyond your wilful nature, impulsive tendencies and your penchant for blatantly ill-considered insubordination?’

  Norroll gulped heavily. Allowances, he recalled, had to be made for misfires.

  He stood ankle-deep in the obsidian razor sands of Abstinax, a child gaping up into the cold blue eyes of death as another child’s blood dripped down his face.

  ‘Every report I have read marks you as exceptional,’ Fennech said. ‘Having now witnessed you in action myself, I can comfortably say you are the most proficient Tempestus Scion I have ever encountered.’ The commissar paused. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  Norroll thought better of responding.

  ‘Dedication, competence and lethality are requisite to all within the Militarum Tempestus, Norroll. May I call you Norroll?’

  Norroll’s voice cracked. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You possess an inquisitive mind, a talent for critical thought and a knack for nonlinear problem-solving that unsurprisingly put you at odds with Militarum Tempestus protocol. The drill abbots at the scholam, in their wisdom, typically make examples of progenia so inclined early on, but you were seemingly cunning enough to conceal your gifts.’

  ‘This is my problem, sir?’

  ‘No, it’s Traxel’s,’ Fennech said flatly. ‘His pet problem, in fact. He’s had two years to correct your behaviour or speed you to the God-Emperor’s bosom, and has done neither. I believe you suspect why.’

  ‘Because I’m highly proficient but incorrigible, sir?’

  ‘Because you are his useful idiot, Norroll,’ Fennech said. ‘And your loyalty to him blinds you to his selfish use of you. Duty demands he remain with First Eradicant until one of you is dead or he declares you redeemed. As such, he need never accept promotion and relinquish the position of Tempestor-Eradicant to you, his ordained successor.’

  Norroll gawped at Fennech for several long seconds. Blood drooled through his respirator’s filters.

  ‘Do you really think Daviland’s reports are the only ones I read, Norroll? Traxel has recommended as much to Tempestor-Prime Bassoumeh directly – and not recently, either.’ Fennech scoffed. ‘About your taking the eradicant, that is, not his promotion to Tempestor-Prime of the Scholam Tempestus.’

  ‘The Scholam Tempestus?’

  ‘Everything you say to me is a question, Norroll,’ Fennech said vexedly, ‘so I will ask you one of my own. How could so brilliant a Scion possibly be as obtuse as you are?’

  ‘Too many blows to the head from Drill Abbot Antrydigm’s hammer?’ Norroll suggested, though he immediately regretted it.

  To his surprise, Fennech laughed.

  ‘Drill Abbot Antrydigm. I had forgotten him.’ The commissar’s grin went cold as suddenly as it had appeared, telling Norroll that he had not forgotten. ‘But, no. Your trouble, Norroll, is that you are uncomfortable being what you are. Do you know what I think?’

  ‘No, commissar.’

  ‘A statement, finally,’ Fennech said. ‘I think, Norroll, that decades of training and mindscaping have impressed the model of the perfect Scion into your head, and you realise how far short you fall of that ideal. You question yourself no less than you question every­thing else. You strive to impress to distract everyone, yourself included, from what you perceive are your glaring inadequacies as a Tempestus Scion. Your occasional displays of compassion and common humanity, as I have read and observed, are frankly inconvenient – we of the scholam serve humanity by being set apart from the common mass of them, Norroll. It is base folly to play at anything otherwise.’

  Norroll’s chin drooped almost imperceptibly, but Fennech noticed.

  ‘Worse still, you appear to bear your heterodoxy with a perverse pride. The origins of this complex of yours are immaterial to me. More vexing to your superiors, I expect, is that this pride appears to make you even more operationally effective. A common point between you and your Tempestor, who is similarly, as you say, highly proficient yet incorrigible.’

  ‘I fail to see how my striving to be a better Scion rewards me with condemnation,’ Norroll said with a taciturn growl. Fennech’s apparent familiarity had opened a font of contempt within him, and he was surprised at how easily it flowed free.

  ‘Because you have not been condemned, Norroll!’ Fennech snarled, brandishing a white-gloved finger. ‘As punishing as conditions in an eradicant can be, no Scion has ever been assigned to one as punishment. Never. You think this a punishment? I can re-educate you on the nature of punishments, if you like.’

  Norroll ignored the threat. ‘Then why send Scions to an eradicant at all? Why not just convert us to servitors or condemn us to bloody arco-flagellation?’

  Fennech’s cold eye narrowed dangerously as his hand twitched towards his holster.

  Norroll realised he had badly misread the commissar’s favour and overstepped his forbearance. He closed his eyes and made peace with the God-Emperor.

  After several seconds, Norroll risked opening his eyes. Astonishment vied with relief – though the commissar yet held him with his frosty glare, he had not drawn his bolt pistol.

  ‘Contrary to what you believe, Norroll,’ Fennech said, his voice quiet, ‘eradicants are not gaols to weed out the nonconformists within your ranks – they are the forges which temper unconventional Scions into weapons fit for the Emperor’s hands. Your recklessness, your recalcitrance and your tendency to question orders and courses of action may have been what got you assigned to First Eradicant, but they are not the reason Traxel kept you all this time. Had he not been so selfish, you would already be a Tempestor.’

  Norroll sighed. ‘What would you have me do, commissar?’

  ‘See things as they are, Norroll, not as you wish them to be,’ Fennech said. ‘One way or another, this is Traxel’s final deployment with First Eradicant. He will either take command of the Scholam Tempestus on Sindral-Gamma afterwards, or I will kill him. If the God-Emperor smiles, the Xian Tigers’ eradicant formations will fall under Tempestor-Prime Traxel, and you will remain under his command as First Eradicant’s Tempestor. Otherwise…’

  Norroll risked a scoff. ‘I suspect we don’t just return to the regimental line.’

  ‘No,’ Fennech said softly. ‘You do not. And there is no “we”, Norroll. Just you.’ He raised a hand, cutting Norroll off. ‘Traxel’s command of Xi-Three-One’s Scions is provisional. He will release Durlo and Bissot after this mission. Replendus is dead, and Daviland has always been free to go, as far as anyone was ever concerned. Like Traxel’s, your fate after this mission depends entirely upon you.’

  Norroll ground his teeth. The guttering ember of his contempt flared again, fuelled by the commissar’s arrogant certainty. He rejected Fennech’s suppositions – Norroll had spent two years under Traxel’s unforgivingly harsh command, pushed harder and for longer than any Scion. During that time, he had followed Traxel into one hell after another, and none in all the 36th Xian could hope to know the Tempestor better. Fennech’s notion that he was merely Traxel’s stooge was nearly enough to make him laugh.

  Except, it didn’t.

  Fennech was telling the truth. Blinded by his loyalty and admiration, Norroll had allowed Traxel to lead him by the nose for two years, goaded onwards by the meagre hope that the next mission would surely be his final deployment in First Eradicant. In refusing to let go, Traxel had failed them both – and in so doing intertwined his failure with Norroll’s.

  Norroll’s hands balled into fists. The lord general and the Tempestor-Prime had mapped out his future as surely as they had mapped out Traxel’s. Fennech’s presence indicated that their sufferance had reached its end.

  ‘As things stand,’ Fennech said, ‘your promotion to Tempestor is already approved by Tempestor-Prime Bassoumeh, pending Traxel’s departure. The time for doubt has passed, Norroll.’ He sniffed. ‘Be ready.’

  Norroll stood silently brooding as Fennech waited, watching him with indulgent patience. After several minutes of immobility, Norroll heaved in a deep breath, then puffed it back out with a long sigh.

  ‘Meditate on your failings,’ the commissar said. ‘You are dismissed.’

  Norroll trudged back up the steel stairs that led to the fortress’ main level and through the bullet-riddled steel doors. Daviland laboured over Phed on the blood-soaked tiles, transforming the atrium into a hasty field surgery. The trooper was clearly conscious but unmoving, his teeth clamped down on a bite splint as he stoically bore what could only be unspeakable pain. Daviland worked, her bloody hands wrist-deep in the gaping hole in Phed’s abdomen. Several intravenous bags lay atop two chairs that had been stacked atop one another, feeding their compounds into Phed’s veins. Atebe, the only Scion in the eradicant besides Daviland herself who had not received a vitalotox infusion, stood next to the medicae-adept, assisting Daviland as best she could during the grisly surgery.

  Next to them, Rybak stripped Quisse of any salvageable gear, not that there was much left. The Iron Warrior’s chaincannon had ripped Quisse in half, tearing the Scion into two across his midsection and severing both his arms. His backpack’s dynamo and capacitor batteries were unrecoverable, as were his shattered slate monitron and most sections of his carapace armour. Rybak rifled through Quisse’s belt pouches, stowing anything useful. He removed Quisse’s Scion dagger, momentarily drawing the blade halfway from its sheath to regard the gleaming, razor-sharp steel. Rybak glanced up as Traxel and Fennech exited the stairway, resheathing the dagger and clipping it to the side of his backpack.

  Norroll halted beside Daviland, allowing Traxel and Fennech time to pass out of the atrium. He wanted to keep as much distance from them as possible.

  ‘Do you need my help?’ he asked the medicae-adept. Receiving a curt shake of her head in reply, he walked to the shattered doors. Splinters of multicoloured glass crunched beneath his boots as he looked out into the late-afternoon glare.

  Just outside, Traxel squinted eastward, towards Vytrum, far beyond the curve of the horizon. The Tempestor massaged his augmetic left hand for reasons Norroll could not conjecture.

  Fennech stood beside Traxel, utterly composed in the uneasy silence, his right hand resting at the small of his back.

  ‘We just killed one of the Heretic Astartes,’ Fennech said. ‘You know the others won’t let that go unanswered.’

  ‘I know,’ Traxel said. ‘They’ll hit us with everything now.’

  ‘Then we must be prepared for anything.’

  ‘We must be prepared to do anything, commissar,’ Traxel said. ‘Though few, these Iron Warriors are the Emperor’s fallen Angels. They are unlike any other foes which cling to the darkness behind the Imperial firmament. An entire regiment could not dislodge one of them from this fortress in three months. It will take another regiment to draw out the rest.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Akraatumo, have we heard anything from the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth?’

  ‘Aye, Tempestor. Colonel Zheev has been in direct contact with what’s left of the Three-Hundred-and-Seventeenth, and I gather he is not at all pleased that we did not support at Pokol. Why?’

  Traxel nodded. ‘Announce to the Three-Hundred-and-Seventeenth, so the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth can hear us, that we are departing Foretrak and intend to resupply at the academy supply depot, en route to Vytrum.’

  ‘Aye, Tempestor.’

  ‘You intend to use the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth as bait?’ Fennech said. His effort to keep the shock from his voice was admirable, but he did not manage to conceal it all.

  Traxel scoffed. ‘You expect the Iron Warriors will face us in honourable single combat, commissar?’ he asked. ‘Alone, they would probably just wipe us from the board with artillery, but if the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth arrives almost simultaneously to exact retribution for our dereliction at Pokol, they will be forced to commit more assets, just to be certain. Anger means applying overwhelming force – the Third Division and Stygians besides, for we just killed one of the Space Marines’ own and smashed his fortress. Overwhelming force means lots of things get lost in the confusion, which includes us. Keeps us in the fight long enough to eliminate the Traitor Astartes.’

  ‘The potential destruction of the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth is unimportant to you?’

  ‘Their purpose is to die for the God-Emperor, commissar,’ Traxel said. ‘Why should I care?’

  ‘Such acumen will serve you admirably as the prefect for the Scholam Tempestus, Tempestor,’ Fennech said advisedly.

  ‘How is Phed, Daviland?’ Traxel called back into the atrium, sidestepping the commissar’s comment.