Anarch

Twenty-Two: The Victory

‘When were you hit?’ asked Mabbon.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Rawne.

‘You’re hit?’ asked Varl.

‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ said Rawne.

They struggled on through the rain, past the silent rockcrete blocks of the mill.

‘It does,’ said Mabbon. ‘You can barely walk. Let me see.’

‘Get off me,’ said Rawne.

‘Oh feth, Eli,’ said Varl. ‘Look at you. I don’t know how you’re standing. Why didn’t you say?’

‘Because it’s something that happened and there’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Rawne.

He looked at them. His face was pale. He had to lean on the wall just to stay upright.

‘You can’t even lift that gun,’ said Varl quietly.

‘I can if I need to.’

‘You know they can smell the blood,’ said Mabbon.

‘I do now,’ said Rawne.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Mabbon. ‘They’d have our scent anyway. Sweat, pheromones, fear. But blood is always strongest.’

‘We just need to keep moving and lay low,’ said Rawne. ‘That’s all. Oysten will come through. I know she will.’ He tried to straighten up, but he couldn’t.

‘And if we have to fight?’ asked Varl.

Rawne held out the lasrifle to Mabbon.

‘You take it,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Mabbon.

‘For feth’s sake!’ Rawne growled.

‘I won’t fight anymore, Rawne,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve fought for too many sides. Too many causes. None of them have made sense to me. So rather than make an oath to others, I made one to myself. I would fight no more. It’s the only pledge I think I can keep.’

‘Pardon me, pheguth,’ said Rawne. ‘You’re hardly one to give a lecture on principles. You fething traitor.’

Mabbon looked away.

‘But you fought for us,’ said Varl. ‘In the end, you came to us. Crossed the lines.’

‘Not to fight,’ said Mabbon. ‘Even if you had let me.’

‘You came to help us win,’ said Varl. ‘To help us stop the war. That’s the same thing!’

‘No, that was very different,’ said Mabbon.

‘Well, I’ve seen some things,’ said Rawne, grimacing. ‘Now I’ve met the only fething pacifist objector in this whole fething galaxy.’

Varl suddenly signalled. Movement.

They hurried in against the flank of a work-shed.

‘Something,’ Varl whispered.

An object hit the wall behind them and bounced onto the floor. The grenade wobbled like an egg as it rolled.

Varl threw himself at Mabbon, driving him aside. Rawne tried to dive the other way.

The blast made a dull and hollow crump in the driving rain.

Rawne found himself lying on his side, his cheek against the wet ground. He couldn’t move. It had been almost an hour since he’d taken the hit in the yard of Camp Xenos. He’d been bleeding ever since, and he knew the loss was severe. He was too weak. Too weak for anything. His will was strong, but his body had given up.

He felt himself slipping into the dark place he’d spent his life fighting to avoid.

Mabbon stirred, and got to his feet. Small flecks of shrapnel had cut his face.

Rawne was down, curled on his side to Mabbon’s left. Varl lay to his right. The sergeant had shielded Mabbon with his own body. Mabbon saw the bloody shrapnel wounds and scorched clothes on Varl’s back and legs. He was face down, and still breathing, but the blast had thrown him into the wall and rendered him unconscious.

Mabbon saw the two figures approaching out of the rain. They were walking side by side, with no sense of haste. One carried a lasrifle, the other was empty-handed.

Mabbon sighed. He reached over and picked up Varl’s weapon, then stepped out to meet them.

Rawne saw the three figures. He couldn’t speak. He saw them side-on, the world turned on its edge. He tried to move. No part of his body responded.

But he could hear them speak. Like Oan Mkoll, he hadn’t survived a year on Gereon without learning the enemy tongue.

Mabbon faced the two Qimurah, rain streaming down his face. He held the weapon low, down at his hip, covering them.

‘Hadrel. Jaghar.’

‘Pheguth,’ said Hadrel.

‘No more grenades?’ Mabbon asked.

Hadrel shrugged, his hands empty.

‘Resources are limited,’ he said. His eyes flashed yellow and his talons crackled as they elongated into hooks. ‘But we don’t need munitions.’

‘You’d fight us now?’ asked Jaghar, his rifle raised.

‘I’d rather not,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve had enough. If it had been down to me, I would have submitted to you at the very start. But you threaten these men, and I will not let you kill them.’

‘What are they to you?’ Jaghar sneered.

‘Nothing,’ said Mabbon. ‘Not even friends. But they have protected me with their lives. I owe them as much. Let them live and I’ll come with you.’

‘All right,’ said Hadrel.

‘You lie so easily, Hadrel,’ said Mabbon.

‘I know,’ Hadrel replied. ‘But you know lies better than I do.’

He took a step forwards.

Mabbon raised Varl’s rifle in a quick warning gesture, adjusting the under-barrel tube.

‘No closer,’ he said. ‘You have a rifle, and you have claws. I have a grenade tube. The reworked are blessed and they are mighty, but this will make a mess of you both at close range.’

‘Indeed,’ grinned Jaghar. ‘If it was working.’ He eyed Mabbon’s gun. ‘I can see from here the mechanism is jammed.’

Mabbon was well aware of that. The launcher tube had been buckled when the blast slammed it against the wall. He’d noticed that the moment he’d picked it up.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘A bluff might have worked.’ He tossed the rifle aside.

‘I wanted to know why,’ said Hadrel.

‘All of us did,’ said Jaghar.

‘Why did you turn, Mabbon?’ Hadrel asked.

Mabbon laughed. ‘I am tired of explaining. I don’t owe you any answer, not you or anyone. I am done with war.’

‘But you sided with them,’ said Hadrel.

‘For the stones, nothing more,’ said Mabbon.

‘But they are everything,’ said Hadrel. ‘The Anarch has told us so. Enkil Vehk. A certain victory, and you brought it to them.’

‘The eagle stone key is an abomination,’ said Mabbon. ‘You know what it does. I am done with war, and it is the greatest monstrosity war has built. I cannot stop this crusade, this endless bloodshed, but I thought perhaps I could stop that.’

‘By giving it to them?’ asked Jaghar. ‘To the corpse-prophet’s chieftains? How is that not taking sides?’

‘The Anarch knows what the key does,’ said Mabbon. ‘He knows where to take it and how it works. But the men of the Throne, they know nothing. Except that the key is valuable, and must be kept from you. If they possessed it, they would guard it. Remove it from the Sabbat Worlds. Keep it from you, so that it could never be used.’

‘They would learn its secrets,’ said Hadrel.

‘I doubt it. A thing that old, that vergoht? They would never puzzle it out.’ He looked at them both. ‘They would not know how to use it, but they could keep it safe so Sek could never use it.’

‘The great magir will have the key by dawn,’ said Jaghar.

‘When his voice next speaks, it will be to tell us that the key is recovered,’ said Hadrel. ‘Corrod has been sent.’

Mabbon sagged. ‘Then it was all for nothing,’ he murmured.

The rain pattered around them.

‘It was all for victory,’ said Hadrel. ‘That was a thing you once rejoiced in. Why did that change?’

‘It changed because I was good at it,’ said Mabbon. ‘As sirdar, as damogaur, as etogaur. I rose and I conquered. I burned worlds. I was a champion of the Sekkite host, inculcated to the truths of the Anarch.’

He looked down at the ground and watched the raindrops dance around his feet.

‘He was pleased with my service. So pleased to turn a man from one side and make him its unflinching foe. So he rewarded me. He bestowed upon me the highest honour, as a favour for my service.’

‘A blessing,’ said Jaghar.

‘A curse,’ said Mabbon. ‘It let me see the truth. The deranged hell of the immaterium and those gods which dwell within it. I saw them all. I saw myself. I saw how he had changed me. I saw what he had made me. It was enough. I turned my back on war forever.’

He looked at them levelly.

‘Walk away,’ he said. ‘This does not have to happen.’

‘We will not,’ said Hadrel. ‘You are pheguth, and you will die. You and those who shelter you.’

Mabbon exhaled, a long slow breath.

‘I will not let you harm them, even if that means breaking my oath. I’ve broken many, so I suppose that doesn’t matter in the end. Last chance, sirdar magir. Walk away, and I’ll let you live.’

Jaghar fired. The las-rounds tore into Mabbon’s side and rocked him backwards. He ploughed forwards anyway, rushing into the hail of shots, flinching with each impact.

He tore the rifle from Jaghar’s hands, and sent the Qimurah flying with a fist. As Hadrel came at him, Mabbon swung and smashed the rifle across Hadrel’s face.

Jaghar bounded at him. Mabbon tossed the broken rifle away and met Jaghar’s attack with a punch that cracked teeth. Jaghar tumbled back.

Mabbon lunged after him. The pheguth’s clothing was torn, shredded by the las-fire. The flesh of his chest bubbled and dripped with yellow gore.

Neon heat welled in his tired, empty eyes. His fingers bulged. Bone snapped. The flesh broke and sprouted talons.

He smashed Jaghar down with a blow that snapped the Qimurah’s head aside and sprayed yellow gore into the air. Hadrel smashed into him, raking claws deep into Mabbon’s chest and back. Yellow plasma gushed from the wounds.

Mabbon grappled with Hadrel, strength to strength, limbs locked. He forced the sirdar backwards, their arms entangled. Jaghar crashed into them, gouging his claws and teeth into Mabbon’s flank.

Mabbon swung, hurling Hadrel away. He smacked Jaghar aside with a backhand, then ripped his talons through the Qimurah’s throat. Jaghar fell to his knees, clutching at the frothing yellow liquid pouring from his opened neck.

Mabbon grabbed his head with both hands, twisted, and wrenched it off.

Jaghar’s corpse fell forward.

Mabbon staggered, mauled and bleeding. He swayed. Hadrel was on his feet again.

‘You were always the best of us, Mabbon,’ he hissed. ‘So very blessed.’

‘I never asked for it,’ said Mabbon. He spat yellow blood, his eyes neon fire. ‘I never wanted it. But he blessed me anyway.’

They clashed like charging bulls, talons tearing and rending, and tore away each other’s flesh with the fury of daemons.

His vision greying back to nothing, Rawne watched as they both fell in the rain, tangled and torn apart, locked together in a final embrace.

Neither of them rose again.

His vision failed.

When it returned, for a brief moment, the cold of eternity was in his bones. He glimpsed lights, dazzlingly bright in the rain, pulsing green and red. He heard the scream of lifter jets. He heard Oysten’s voice calling his name.

Calling him back.

And that was all.