M1919

*bumps into you

"Hail, samurai."

frostgators are almost in season.

hey. collect my pages.

'Hello, sir,' another of the Legionnaires says. I glance behind Ryken, to a man several places down the line. My targeting reticule locks on him - onto his grinning face. He is unscarred, and despite his youth, has laugh lines at the corner of his eyes.

So. He's not dead, either.

This does not surprise me. Some men are born with luck in their blood.

I nod to him, and he walks over, seemingly as bored with the proceedings as I am.

The orator is declaring how I 'smote the blaspheming aliens as they dared defile the temple's inner sanctum.' His words border on a sermon. He would have made a fine ecclesiarch, or a preacher in the Imperial Guard.

The ochre-clad soldier offers his hand for me to shake. I humor him by doing the same.

'Hello, hero,' he grins up at me.

'Greetings, Andrej.'

'I like your armor. It is much nicer now. Did you repaint it yourself, or is that the duty of slaves?'

I cannot tell if this is a joke or not.

'Myself.'

'Good! Good. Perhaps you should salute me now, though, yes?' He taps his epaulettes, where a captain's badges now show, freshly issued and polished silver.

'I am not beholden to a Guard captain,' I tell him. 'But congratulations.'

'Yes, I know, I know. But I must be offering many thanks for you keeping your word and telling my captain of my deeds.'

'An oath is an oath.' I have no idea what to say to the little man. 'Your friend. Your love. Did you find her?'

I am no judge of human emotion, but I see his smile turn fragile and false. 'Yes,' he says. 'I did find her.'

I think of the last time I saw the little storm trooper, standing over the dockmaster's bloody corpse, bayoneting an alien in the throat, only moments before the basilica fell.

I find myself curiously glad that he is alive, but expressing that notion is not something I can easily forge into words. He has no such difficulty.

'I am glad you made it,' he uses my own unspoken words. 'I heard you were very injured, yes?'

'Not enough to kill me.'

But so close. I quickly grew bored of the Apothecaries on board the Crusader telling me that it was a miracle I clawed my way from the rubble.

He laughs, but there is little joy in it. His eyes are like glass since he mentioned finding his friend.

'You are a very literal man, Reclusiarch. Some of us were in lazy moods that day. I waited for the digging crews, yes, I admit it. I did not have Adeptus Astartes armor to push the rocks off myself and get back to fighting the very next day.'

'The reports I have heard indicated no one else survived the fall of the basilica,' I tell him.

He laughs. 'Yes, that would make for a wonderful story, no? The last black knight, the only survivor of the greatest battle in Helsreach. I apologize for surviving and breaking the flow of your legend, Reclusiarch. I promise most faithfully that I and the six or seven others will be very quiet and let you have all the thunder.'

He has made a joke. I recognize it, and try to think of something humorous with which to reply. Nothing surfaces in my mind.

'Were you not injured at all?'

He shrugs. 'I had a headache. But then it went away.'

This makes me smile.

'Tell me something,' I said, 'before I leave.'

'Speak.'

'Sigismund. How did he wound you?'

Abaddon fell silent, the vicious vitality of ambition bleeding away. The black rebreather covered much of his face, and the murk occluded some of his expression, but I believe for the very first time, I saw something like shame flicker across my lord's face.

How curious.

'He wouldn't die,' Abaddon said at last, thoughtful and low. 'He just wouldn't die.'

I did not need to skim his mind of insight. Just from his tone, I knew what had happened. 'He baited you. You were lost to rage.'

I saw the muscles of Abaddon's jaw and throat clench as he ground his teeth. 'It was over before I knew he had struck me. I couldn't breathe. I felt no pain, but I couldn't breathe. The Black Sword was buried to the hilt, like the old man had sheathed it inside my chest.'

Ezekyle's voice was soft across the speakers, cushioned by the bitterness and fascination of reflection. His words were almost staccato whispers, each one a drop of acid on bare flesh. 'The only way to kill me was to welcome his own death, and he did it the moment the chance arose. We were face to face like that, with his blade through my body. My armour sparked. It failed. I lashed back. His blood soaked the Talon. He fell.'

I remained quiet, letting Abaddon's tale unspool. His eyes were looking through me, not seeing what was, but what had been.

'He wasn't dead Khayon. He was on the floor, sprawled like a corpse, disemboweled and town in two, but he still lived. I was on my knees, forcing my dead lungs to keep breathing, kneeling over him like an Apothecary. The black sword was still through me. Our eyes met. He spoke.'

I did not ask Abaddon to tell me. I tentatively reached into his thoughts at first in case he rebuffed my presence.

Then I closed my eyes, and I saw.

The black knight, fallen and ripped apart. His Sword Brethren gone or dead, I did not know which. Red staining Sigismund's tabard, red decorating the deck beneath and around him; red in Abaddon's eyes, misting his sight.

Blood. So much blood.

Here at last, he looked at every one of his years, with time's lines cracking his face. He looked upwards at the chamber's ornate ceiling; his eyes lifted as if in reverence to the Master of Mankind upon His throne of hold.

Sigismund's hand trembled, still twitching, seeking his fallen sword.

'No,' Abaddon murmured with brotherly gentleness through the running of his blood and the heaving of his chest. 'No. It's over. Sleep now, in the failure you have earned.'

The knight's fingertips scraped the hilt of his blade. So very close, yet he lacked the strength to move even that far. His face was the bloodless blue of the newly dead, yet still he breathed.

'Sigismund,' Abaddon said, through lips darkened by his lifeblood, 'This claw has killed two primarchs. It wounded the Emperor to death. I would have spared it the taste of your life as well. If you could have only seen what I have seen.'

As I stared through Abaddon's eyes, I confess I expected the triteness of some knightly oath, or a final murmur in the Emperor's name. Instead, the ruined thing that had been the First Captain of the Imperial Fists and High Marshal of the Black Templars spoke through a mouthful of blood, committing the last of his life to biting off each word, ensuring he spoke each one in shivering, sanguine clarity.

'You will die as your weakling father died. Soulless. Honourless. Weeping. Ashamed.'

Sigismund's last word was also his last breath. It sighed out of his mouth, taking his soul with it.

Davos knelt, and Stannis drew his longsword. Lightbringer, Melisandre had named it; the red sword of heroes, drawn from the fires where the seven gods were consumed. The room seemed to grow brighter as the blade slid from its scabbard. The steel had a glow to it: orange, yellow, and red. The air shimmered around it; no jewel had ever sparkled so brilliantly. But when Stannis touched it to Davos's shoulder, it felt no different than any other longsword.

"Ser Davos of House Seaworth," the king said, "are you my true and honest liege man, now and forever?"

"I am, Your Grace."

"And do you swear to serve me loyally all your days, to give me honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend my rights and my realm against all foes in battles great and small, to protect my people and punish my enemies?"

"I do, Your Grace."

"Then rise again, Davos Seaworth, and rise as Lord of the Rainwood, Admiral of the Narrow Sea, and Hand of the King."

For a moment, Davos was too stunned to move. I woke up this morning in his dungeon. "Your Grace, you cannot... I am no fit man to be a King's Hand."

"There is no man fitter." Stannis sheathed Lightbringer, gave Davos his hand, and pulled him to his feet.

"I am lowborn," Davos reminded him. "An upjumped smuggler. Your lords will never obey me."

"Then we will make new lords."

Stannis ground his teeth. “It is not my wish to tamper with your rights and traditions. As to royal guidance, Janos, if you mean that I ought to tell your brothers to choose you, have the courage to say so.”

That took Lord Janos aback. He smiled uncertainly and began to sweat, but Bowen Marsh beside him said, “Who better to command the black cloaks than a man who once commanded the gold, sire?”

“Any of you, I would think. Even the cook.” The look the king gave Slynt was cold.

You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris?