SALAMANDERS THE OMNIBUS by Nick Kyme

Author:Nick Kyme
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2018-05-04T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

I

Harbinger

I am Death.

Its shroud follows me like a shadow I cannot shrug off.

I feel the cold of it reaching around my twin hearts like a forging clamp even as the font of rage within me boils.

My father taught me to be thus. He taught with his blood and the genetic legacy of his mortal body.

Why then do my brothers, warriors all, not feel as I do?

Why does the guilt of my past deeds and lack of deeds haunt me like a spectre crouched on my shoulder?

I am invulnerable. I am war incarnate. I am the anvil upon which my enemies break.

But I am hollow, a shell filled with liquid fire.

How long before it overtakes my fragile form and burns me down to ash?

Tsu’gan opened his eyes. The branding rod had gone deep, a savage scoring in his right bicep that retraced his previous glories.

He found his teeth gritted with a rime of blood from when he’d bitten his lip. It wasn’t pain that drove the Salamander to do this, but anger. Tsu’gan had hoped upon promotion to the First Company that he would re-find his purpose, quell the choler inside him. Induction to the Firedrakes, his isolation on Prometheus surrounded by relics of champions, fighting alongside the Chapter’s mightiest heroes had only intensified the flame within.

It was as useful as it was debilitating. Unleashed on the battlefield, Tsu’gan’s battle rage made him formidable if reckless. His weakness had been noticed, however. Before, when he was brother-sergeant of Third Company, it had been Fugis who got closest to discovering his destructive masochism; now it was Praetor, veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes and Tu’Shan’s mailed fist in matters when the Regent was otherwise engaged, who watched him.

Mercifully, Praetor’s duties were many and kept him busy. Tsu’gan had no reason to suspect the veteran sergeant’s interest was anything more than mild concern.

The deaths of his battle-brothers bothered Tsu’gan greatly. Seeing heroes sundered, the other Firedrakes whom he regarded as invincible, shook his faith more deeply than he cared to admit. Only since Kadai had it been this way. He had idolised his former captain. His demise and the nature of it had left a crack of imperfection in Tsu’gan’s psyche. Like any wound that is left untended, it had festered and grown.

He had accepted it; accepted death was part of his warrior calling, before that fateful moment. A strange divergence of destiny had begun after that mission. Tsu’gan was no psyker, but he felt the shifting of fate nonetheless. He had taken to reading scrolls of prophecy, absorbing the encrypted wisdom of his forebears. Admittance to the Pantheon Chamber and the Tome of Fire was not permitted but there was lore enough on Prometheus in its vault-chambers and reliquary-shrines to satisfy Tsu’gan’s appetite. His path was his own. He would not allow another to dictate it to him.

Tsu’gan stood on a dais of burning coals. His bare feet smouldered, tendrils of smoke twisting through his toes, but he felt no discomfort. His body was inured to such things.

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