Faith in Iron by Cameron Johnston

Author:Cameron Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2019-12-10T16:57:36+00:00

About the Author

Cameron Johnston is the British Fantasy Award and Dragon Awards nominated author of grimdark fantasy novels The Traitor God and God of Broken Things. He is a swordsman, a gamer, and an enthusiast of archaeology, history and mythology. He loves exploring ancient sites and camping out under the stars by a roaring fire.

An extract from The Eye of Medusa.

Book 1 of the Iron Hands series.

‘With this link, I bind you to my clan.’

‘To my clan.’ Echoes of gears and metal.

Kardan Stronos barely heard the words of the litany. They had become inseparable from the shriek of bone planes and laser scalpels. Every tiny bone vibrated to its own share of the agony, and only his fundamental genetic hardening kept him conscious of the process at all.

‘Is there pain?’ The voice of the tech-priest, Artisan Adept Sabeq Rawl, was perfectly level. Stronos was equally fastidious in answering, the question as much a component of the ritual as the pain.

‘Pain is of the flesh. From this day onward, I am iron.’

The words they spoke were Reket, the dialect of the mortal Garrsaki clansmen and the ritual tongue of their iron overlords. It was a language of few words and constraining syntax, colourless and harsh, enforcing the terse, inexpressive speech of its wielders. The differences between it and other Medusan forms were sufficient to make its usage under the present circumstances a challenge. As was the intent.

‘The flesh cannot speak with the clarity of machine to machine,’ said Sabeq. ‘It communicates its needs through the code-language of pain.’ Stronos felt the ceramite outer casing of his upper backplate adeptly unscrewed and detached, servomuscular bundles shrinking from their first taste of the Alloyed’s meagre atmosphere. ‘What about…’ Then came the sharp jab of a spinal probe between the mechanisms and into the marrow. ‘Now?’

Stronos’ gasp perished midway up his throat, and he swallowed his cry with an effort. ‘Barely.’

‘Good.’ Impossible to be certain, but the priest sounded impressed. ‘The sensation you are feeling now is your spine passing instruction to your pain centres that the graft has been integrated successfully. Congratulations, Lord Stronos – you are of the clan.’

‘Of the clan.’

There was a chittering whir as hook limbs passed over the back of his neck, anointing the new implant with oils, machining them into the gloss with an array of rotable scrubbers.

Stronos winced, the area still raw, and fixed his gaze firmly forward.

The cell was small, iron grey, the minimum necessary for the physical existence of a transhuman being. Elevation to the rank of sergeant brought the privilege of single quarters, an archaic custom for his needs were few, but tradition was tradition, and the single cot was the one on which he sat. The occasional spasm of his muscles, and the artisan’s insect-quick shifts in position, brought sympathetic creaks and groans from its frame. The current placement of his hands, laid one atop the other over an ironbound incunabulum in his lap, played a large part in his outward stoicism. Not

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