Tied
‘How far back do we have to go?’ John asks, watching Oll crouch down to tie another loop of thread. The dead, grey street, which reminds Grammaticus of the back lane of some plague-emptied medieval berg, is dismally quiet, except for the gust and rumble of the warp storm haunting the horizon.
‘All the way,’ Oll replies. ‘The whole route has to be marked. So, as far as we can get, I guess. I don’t know… Calth?’
‘That far?’ John gasps in dismay.
Oll grins at him.
‘No, idiot,’ he says. ‘Just as far as the point where we started to leave the threads.’
John looks relieved.
‘So, the Palace?’
Oll nods and rises. They start walking again, following the winding cobbled street. Oll’s lasrifle is slung over his shoulder, but John has his carbine across his chest, ready. The immaterial breeze stirs the weeds growing between the cobblestones, and flutters dead leaves from gutters.
‘The last thread I remember us leaving was just before the Custodes captured us,’ says Oll. ‘So, that far at least. We have to make sure the path meets, or overlaps. It has to be there for us.’
Oll pauses.
‘It has to still have been there for us…’ he tries. He shakes his head. ‘You’re better at the tenses than I am.’
‘Not that good,’ John says.
They walk a little further, and cross a grubby, timber-beamed yard.
‘How do we know we’re making the same route?’ he asks.
‘I don’t think we do, not exactly,’ Oll replies, ‘and I don’t think it matters. As long as there’s a clear course that takes us – took us – from the Palace to the place we met – will meet – the Emperor…’ He frowns in frustrated amusement. ‘I’m saying, as long as there’s a path, it’ll find us. I mean, it did find us.’
He smiles at John again. They’re both trying hard to treat the task as the crucial thing it is, and not the ludicrous errand it appears to be. They know it matters, and that if it’s not done, everything will fall apart. But it seems so trivial and mindless when they know that somewhere, something far more important must be taking place. They’re trying very hard not to think about that.
‘What if we run out of yarn?’ John asks.
Oll shrugs. The clew of thread is getting smaller, but it never seems to run out, no matter how many pieces he breaks off with his teeth. They exit the yard through a dim passageway, and emerge onto another street. Oll waits obligingly as John scopes for danger, carbine raised. When he’s sure the street is empty, he beckons Oll out. He’s taking his promise seriously, even though he made it to himself. He’s going to keep Oll safe. It makes him part of this, not a hanger-on. It helps make their mission seem significant.
In the street, timber-gabled dwellings overhang melancholy flagstone pavements. Oll stops to tie another thread to a gutter pipe.
‘Does it matter that it’s us leaving them?’ John asks.
‘So many questions, Grammaticus!’ Oll laughs, shaking his head.
‘No, I mean, Hebet tied them. Even the ones he didn’t tie. He said he recognised his own knots. But these won’t be his.’
‘They were mine anyway,’ says Oll.
‘What?’
Oll has cut off another length of twine. He shows John how he is tying it around the pipe, and the knot he’s making. He thinks of the sun flashing on waters dark as wine, the Pleiades rising to announce the start of sailing season, the fast boats with the bright eyes painted on their bows to stare down daemons and see the way ahead.
‘The wolf noose,’ he says. ‘It’s as old as me. We used to use it as a rope hitch at sea. I taught it to Hebet. Him and me used to tie up sheaves of swartgrass with it on the farm. The knots looked like his because they looked like mine.’
He points to the loop around the pipe.
‘There,’ he says. ‘Who tied that? Can you tell? Do you think Hebet would know?’
‘So they could have been yours all along?’
‘They probably will be,’ says Oll.
John snorts, and sighs. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this, Oll. I can’t believe this is how our part ends. Some mundane chore.’
‘Important chore.’
‘Yeah, but still…’
‘You’re such a romantic, John. A story isn’t a story to you unless it has a sweeping or epic ending, eh? A dramatic climax? Some last heroic deed? Life’s not like that, and neither are myths. They’re not all neatly plotted out in a satisfying sequence. They happen in the order they happen. You remember the parts in the Eleniki myths when they careen their ships so the chandlers can scrape the hulls? And they patch in new deck planks, and sew replacement sails?’
‘No.’
‘Exactly. But they are parts of the stories. The stories couldn’t have happened without them.’
John shrugs in resignation.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘So, you’re saying, it’s boring being a legend?’
‘Oh, you’re a legend now? You wish,’ says Oll. ‘I’m saying not all legends have a big finish.’
‘This one does,’ says John ruefully. ‘It’s just happening somewhere else.’
‘Try not to think about it,’ Oll starts to say. But John has grabbed him, his hand over Oll’s mouth, and pulled him into the shadows of the wall.
A squad of Traitor Excertus, Merudin 20th Tactical by the look of them, trudge down the old street. They are filthy and tired, wary and jumpy. The pair hide until the troopers have disappeared from view.
‘Thanks,’ Oll whispers.
‘I’m here to look out for you, remember? Keep you safe?’ John checks his short-pattern rifle, and folds out the wire stock. ‘We don’t want to fight if we don’t have to. But we’re not alone out here.’
Oll nods. ‘The sooner we find a way back into the Sanctum, the better,’ he says. ‘You spot a door or anything, we take it.’
‘It won’t be any safer in there,’ says John.
‘No,’ Oll agrees, ‘but think about this. If the Emperor… wins, then Horus will be dead, or subdued. If that happens, the warp will probably loosen its grip. Chaos will be in retreat. And all of this, this city, this realm, will realign. The materia of realspace will stabilise again.’
‘I hope so,’ says John, with a shiver.
‘So do I. So if we’re not in the Palace when that happens–’
‘We’ll be stuck out here?’
‘No. Well, yes, but worse. We’ll still have to leave the trail, because it’s essential, but all the steps along the way won’t be stuck together any more. They’ll all be stretched out again across time, and space, back where they came from… The Sanctum, the damn ship, this city, and every other bit of every city we’ve been through. Leaving the trail then will be much harder. We’d have to use the old Immaterium Sidestep again.’
‘Shit,’ says John. ‘That could take years.’
‘Years,’ says Oll. ‘Centuries. The rest of our lives.’
Grammaticus exhales hard. He doesn’t like the sound of that. Doing it one way was a long, gruelling odyssey. Doing it again backwards…
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Let’s pick up the pace. Let’s find an entrance to the Sanctum as fast as we can. Dammit, I wish we could navigate out here. Get a bearing on the Palace. A true read…’
‘Forget it. My compass is useless. The warp storm screws with it. Your torquetum too. They don’t work here.’
‘It’s broken anyway,’ says John. ‘When we fought that bastard Erebus, I think I fell on it.’
He pulls the little device out of his pocket to prove the point.
The wraithbone torquetum is intact.
‘It was definitely broken,’ says John. ‘Definitely.’
‘But He repaired us,’ Oll replies softly. ‘Everything. These old guns, our clothes. Us. He mended everything when…’
He trails off. They stare at each other.
‘No,’ whispers John.
Oll doesn’t dare look. He puts his hand into the deep pocket of his military jacket. He pulls out the splinters of the old knife.
Except he doesn’t.
Across the palm of his hand, the stone knife is unbroken.
‘He made everything whole again,’ murmurs John, gazing at it in wonder.
‘More than whole,’ says Oll. ‘New.’
He can feel the tingle of the lapped blade, the life in it restored. It isn’t the tired, ugly throb of old murders that it used to be. It’s the lithe and urgent hunger of an apex predator.
‘He needs this,’ Oll says. ‘He needs every advantage He can get because, Throne knows, the odds are against Him. I hate to tell you this, John, but we’ve got to go back again.’