Fist of the Imperium by Andy Clark

Author:Andy Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2019-11-05T10:02:58+00:00

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Lydorran and Storn walked slowly down an echoing cloister. For the first time since coming to Ghyre, their battered armour was in the care of their Chapter serfs, the two warriors instead clad in monastic robes. On one side they passed a long tapestry that displayed in allegorical form the events of the Great Crusade and the fall of the Traitor Horus, depicted as a daemonic thing of shadow and ichor with curling horns and a serpent’s tongue. On their other they passed tall archways that led out onto a somewhat overgrown garden quadrangle, abandoned since the priests who once tended it had fled. Winged insects flitted from plant to plant, and to Lydorran’s eyes the rare patch of true greenery looked incongruous amidst the sombre stonework.

The cloister was part of a shrine to the Imperial faith that had been evacuated and subsequently abandoned due to its close proximity to the Mercurio Gate space port. Some days earlier Apothecaries Lordas and Justen had claimed the structure as a meditatorium for those Imperial Fists wounded sorely enough to require convalescence before they could return to the fight. In the wake of the assault on Delv­emine and the shocking events that followed, Lydorran had retreated here to think, and to give his augmetic socket time to bed into his flesh. Now, as he and Storn walked, he flexed the fingers of his new bionic hand experimentally.

‘How is it?’ asked Storn.

‘Strange,’ confessed Lydorran. Storn remained silent for a few paces, as though inviting further comment on the Librarian’s new metallic forearm and hand. Instead, Lydorran said, ‘You did not come here to ask me about my arm, Brother-Chaplain.’

‘I did not,’ said Storn. The two of them reached a long stone bench that looked out onto the sunlit garden. They sat. Lydorran’s eyes roved, following the industrious insects gathering pollen from the plants. He flexed his metal fingers, hearing minute servos whine and joints click.

‘Uncomplicated,’ Lydorran said, nodding to the insects. ‘They work, do their duty, live their simple lives and die. You do not see them troubled by sedition or heresy.’

‘They are mindless and unworthy,’ replied Storn, his brows drawing down into a scowl. ‘They, too, are not why I am here.’

‘You are here because you wish to know why I linger when I should be out upon the front lines, driving our efforts to locate this broodnest that Redfang seeks,’ said Lydorran. In that moment, he felt unutterably weary, the sensation alien and unsettling to him. Storn looked sideways at him, his craggy features unreadable.

‘You are allowing your augmetic time to bed in,’ said Storn, his voice oddly stoic. ‘Every brother in the strike force knows this. All beseech the primarch for your swift return to battle.’

‘Storn, I failed them,’ Lydorran replied, and the words tasted bitter in his mouth. ‘I failed them, I failed you, and the governor and her people.’ He left one last name unsaid, biting it off before it could pass his lips. To his surprise, Storn’s expression did not change.

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