by Guy Haley
‘And when will he extend his presence?’
The Cawl Inferior actually laughed.
‘Such impatience! Were you always this grumpy, or was it death that robbed you of humour?’
‘I see. We have to endure the impudence. Very well. When might I expect a visit from Cawl?’
‘Not for a while. Not before you cross the Rift.’
‘Then I must insist he follow me across.’
‘You know, lord regent, your mistrust of Archmagos Belisarius Cawl saddens him. He does not need to be at your side to conclude the mission you have set him.’
‘That he has set himself,’ corrected Guilliman.
‘Semantics. You would have set it for him, had he not undertaken to do so unilaterally.’
‘He is arrogant to presume to predict my mood or my intentions.’
‘Well, yes, but the point is, he has, so maybe we should allow him his superior manner and simply let him get on with things?’
‘Just report,’ said Guilliman.
‘Testy, I would have thought victory would have pleased you. All right then. Archmagos Belisarius Cawl cannot return to Ultramar yet. But he will. There is an artefact upon the Eastern Fringes that interests him greatly. He will soon be heading there.’
‘Which one?’ said Guilliman.
‘That which resides upon Sotha.’
‘The Pharos,’ said Guilliman.
‘Give the man an honour,’ said the Cawl Inferior archly. ‘The Pharos. Archmagos Belisarius Cawl is now certain that this device is of necron origin, and that it will reveal much knowledge beneficial to his understanding of noctilith. All he requires is a key to access it. He is in the process of acquiring that key right now.’
‘For what purpose does he wish to visit the Pharos?’
‘For many purposes,’ responded the Cawl Inferior. ‘Do not think to stop him. He is aware you put a ban on the place long ago.’
‘I was not going to stop him,’ said Guilliman. ‘If he wishes to plumb the depths of that device, I have full confidence he will do so without causing any harm. You will convey this sentiment to him. Is that clear?’
‘It is committed to the return message code,’ said the Cawl Inferior, after a pause.
‘Tell him Tetrarch Felix now rules that part of Ultramar.’
‘My master will contact him. He will be pleased to see him again.’
‘How go Cawl’s efforts to unlock the secrets of the blackstone pylons?’
‘His work proceeds well,’ said the Cawl Inferior. ‘Access to the Pharos will enable him to accelerate the process. He will be successful. He is Archmagos Belisarius Cawl and he can do anything. Before long, he will have the knowledge he needs.’
‘So he claims,’ said Guilliman.
‘It is more than a claim. That we are having this conversation is proof of it. There are many potential dialogues in my memory cores. He accounted for all possibilities, but he assumed a certain track of events, and so far, his calculations have shown a deviation of less than one per cent from his predictions. His great work will come to fruition, you can rely on him.’
‘What is the content of these other dialogues?’
‘Disasters. Deaths. Doom,’ said the Cawl Inferior. ‘I can be no more specific. I have delivered my encoded message. I have nothing more to relay. Please offer your response for encoding and transmission to my counterpart.’
Guilliman’s face set. The machine waited expectantly.
‘Matters are becoming complicated for me,’ he said.
‘Ah! A rare confidence,’ said the Cawl Inferior. ‘Pray tell, how?’
‘Prayer is the crux of it,’ said Guilliman. ‘A grievous blow was struck against the Plague God.’
‘Then you should rejoice.’
‘What if I were not the one who struck it?’ Guilliman replied.
‘Explain.’
‘I fear the Emperor may be moving. I fear that He worked through me. I refused to believe it at first, but the evidence that I have been presented with offers only one viable practical.’
‘That is?’
‘The Emperor is active again. He is at work through the tarot, through visions, so-called saints and acts of faith. I know I spoke with Him, but I am still not sure what I saw or heard in the throne room. My first solid indication that something real was occurring was the nature of the warning of the Pariah Nexus. I resisted the idea at the time, though the possibility was put to me early on. But evidence accrues. Now, I can no longer dismiss this theoretical out of hand.’
‘Why fear?’
‘What?’
‘You used the word fear, not think, believe, consider, calculate, guess, hypothesise or any other appertaining to deductive psychological processes. Why fear?’
‘Do you believe the Emperor is a god?’ said Guilliman.
‘Ah, I see why fear. Do I, the Cawl Inferior, believe that, or does Archmagos Belisarius Cawl?’
‘Either. Both,’ said Guilliman.
‘The dogma of the majority of the sects within the Cult Mechanicus regards the Emperor as the living avatar of the Omnissiah, the third of the Machine-God that bestrides the galaxy clad in mortal form.’
‘I know that,’ said Guilliman patiently. ‘A creed that the Emperor pointed out as false on numerous occasions, by the way. What I wish to know is what you and Cawl think, not believe, but think.’
The machine fell quiet. Mechanisms clattered loudly.
‘I have no response.’
‘Do you believe He can come back?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Can He be returned to full life, like I was?’
‘Who?’
‘The Emperor. Cease toying with me.’
‘The question is meaningless. I have no beliefs.’
‘I said do not play games with me. Respond. I command you.’
More silence. More clicks. The heads in the tanks twitched.
Guilliman was about to speak again when the machine’s voice filled the room.
‘If I were the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, which I am not, I would have one cautionary advisement to give regarding this line of thought.’
‘Then advise me, machine.’
‘If it is possible to restore the Emperor, and if He could regain true life, then what went into the throne room of the Imperial Palace may not be what emerges. There is great peril considering this, even as a hypothesis, because thoughts lead to actions, whether we intend them to or not. Before you know it, we reach disaster, all from good intentions.’ There was a pause. ‘They used to say that. About roads to bad places. Paved with good intentions.’
‘Why would it be perilous? Expand.’
‘Because all gods are blights on existence, Roboute Guilliman, whether they call themselves gods or not,’ the Cawl Inferior said. ‘I think you know that better than anyone. Do not forget it.’
There was silence.
‘Now, if there is nothing else?’ asked the Cawl Inferior.
‘No.’
‘Then present the remainder of your message for encoding.’
Guilliman did, then returned to his wars.
Imperium Nihilus awaited.
About the Author
Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife
and son.
An extract from Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.
‘I was there at the Siege of Terra,’ Vitrian Messinius would say in his later years.
‘I was there…’ he would add to himself, his words never meant for ears but his own. ‘I was there the day the Imperium died.’
But that was yet to come.
‘To the walls! To the walls! The enemy is coming!’ Captain Messinius, as he was then, led his Space Marines across the Penitent’s Square high up on the Lion’s Gate. ‘Another attack! Repel them! Send them back to the warp!’
Thousands of red-skinned monsters born of fear and sin scaled the outer ramparts, fury and murder incarnate. The mortals they faced quailed. It took the heart of a Space Marine to stand against them without fear, and the Angels of Death were in short supply.
‘Another attack, move, move! To the walls!’
They came in the days after the Avenging Son returned, emerging from nothing, eight legions strong, bringing the bulk of their numbers to bear against the chief entrance to the Imperial Palace. A decapitation strike like no other, and it came perilously close to success.
Messinius’ Space Marines ran to the parapet edging the Penitent’s Square. On many worlds, the square would have been a plaza fit to adorn the centre of any great city. Not on Terra. On the immensity of the Lion’s Gate, it was nothing, one of hundreds of similarly huge spaces. The word ‘gate’ did not suit the scale of the cityscape. The Lion’s Gate’s bulk marched up into the sky, step by titanic step, until it rose far higher than the mountains it had supplanted. The gate had been built by the Emperor Himself, they said. Myths detailed the improbable supernatural feats required to raise it. They were lies, all of them, and belittled the true effort needed to build such an edifice. Though the Lion’s Gate was made to His design and by His command, the soaring monument had been constructed by mortals, with mortal hands and mortal tools. Messinius wished that had been remembered. For men to build this was far more impressive than any godly act of creation. If men could remember that, he believed, then perhaps they would remember their own strength.
The uncanny may not have built the gate, but it threatened to bring it down. Messinius looked over the rampart lip, down to the lower levels thousands of feet below and the spread of the Anterior Barbican.
Upon the stepped fortifications of the Lion’s Gate was armour of every colour and the blood of every loyal primarch. Dozens of regiments stood alongside them. Aircraft filled the sky. Guns boomed from every quarter. In the churning redness on the great roads, processional ways so huge they were akin to prairies cast in rockcrete, were flashes of gold where the Emperor’s Custodian Guard battled. The might of the Imperium was gathered there, in the palace where He dwelt.
There seemed moments on that day when it might not be enough.
The outer ramparts were carpeted in red bodies that writhed and heaved, obscuring the great statues adorning the defences and covering over the guns, an invasive cancer consuming reality. The enemy were legion. There were too many foes to defeat by plan and ruse. Only guns, and will, would see the day won, but the defenders were so pitifully few.
Messinius called a wordless halt, clenched fist raised, seeking the best place to deploy his mixed company, veterans all of the Terran Crusade. Gunships and fighters sped overhead, unleashing deadly light and streams of bombs into the packed daemonic masses. There were innumerable cannons crammed onto the gate, and they all fired, rippling the structure with false earthquakes. Soon the many ships and orbital defences of Terra would add their guns, targeting the very world they were meant to guard, but the attack had come so suddenly; as yet they had had no time to react.
The noise was horrendous. Messinius’ audio dampers were at maximum and still the roar of ordnance stung his ears. Those humans that survived today would be rendered deaf. But he would have welcomed more guns, and louder still, for all the defensive fury of the assailed palace could not drown out the hideous noise of the daemons – their sighing hisses, a billion serpents strong, and chittering, screaming wails. It was not only heard but sensed within the soul, the realms of spirit and of matter were so intertwined. Messinius’ being would be forever stained by it.
Tactical information scrolled down his helmplate, near environs only. He had little strategic overview of the situation. The vox-channels were choked with a hellish screaming that made communication impossible. The noosphere was disrupted by etheric backwash spilling from the immaterial rifts the daemons poured through. Messinius was used to operating on his own. Small-scale, surgical actions were the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but in a battle of this scale, a lack of central coordination would lead inevitably to defeat. This was not like the first Siege, where his kind had fought in Legions.
He called up a company-wide vox-cast and spoke to his warriors. They were not his Chapter-kin, but they would listen. The primarch himself had commanded that they do so.
‘Reinforce the mortals,’ he said. ‘Their morale is wavering. Position yourselves every fifty yards. Cover the whole of the south-facing front. Let them see you.’ He directed his warriors by chopping at the air with his left hand. His right, bearing an inactive power fist, hung heavily at his side. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles, back forty yards, single firing line. Prepare to engage enemy breakthroughs only on my mark. Devastators, split to demi-squads and take up high ground, sergeant and sub-squad prime’s discretion as to positioning and target. Remember our objective, heavy infliction of casualties. We kill as many as we can, we retreat, then hold at the Penitent’s Arch until further notice. Command squad, with me.’
Command squad was too grand a title for the mismatched crew Messinius had gathered around himself. His own officers were light years away, if they still lived.
‘Doveskamor, Tidominus,’ he said to the two Aurora Marines with him. ‘Take the left.’
‘Yes, captain,’ they voxed, and jogged away, their green armour glinting orange in the hell-light of the invasion.
The rest of his scratch squad was comprised of a communications specialist from the Death Spectres, an Omega Marine with a penchant for plasma weaponry, and a Raptor holding an ancient standard he’d taken from a dusty display.
‘Why did you take that, Brother Kryvesh?’ Messinius asked, as they moved forward.
‘The palace is full of such relics,’ said the Raptor. ‘It seems only right to put them to use. No one else wanted it.’
Messinius stared at him.
‘What? If the gate falls, we’ll have more to worry about than my minor indiscretion. It’ll be good for morale.’
The squads were splitting to join the standard humans. Such was the noise many of the men on the wall had not noticed their arrival, and a ripple of surprise went along the line as they appeared at their sides. Messinius was glad to see they seemed more firm when they turned their eyes back outwards.
‘Anzigus,’ he said to the Death Spectre. ‘Hold back, facilitate communication within the company. Maximum signal gain. This interference will only get worse. See if you can get us patched in to wider theatre command. I’ll take a hardline if you can find one.’
‘Yes, captain,’ said Anzigus. He bowed a helm that was bulbous with additional equipment. He already had the access flap of the bulky vox-unit on his arm open. He withdrew, the aerials on his power plant extending. He headed towards a systems nexus on the far wall of the plaza, where soaring buttresses pushed back against the immense weight bearing down upon them.
Messinius watched him go. He knew next to nothing about Anzigus. He spoke little, and when he did, his voice was funereal. His Chapter was mysterious, but the same lack of familiarity held true for many of these warriors, thrown together by miraculous events. Over their years lost wandering in the warp, Messinius had come to see some as friends as well as comrades, others he hardly knew, and none he knew so well as his own Chapter brothers. But they would stand together. They
were Space Marines. They had fought by the returned primarch’s side, and in that they shared a bond. They would not stint in their duty now.
Messinius chose a spot on the wall, directing his other veterans to left and right. Kryvesh he sent to the mortal officer’s side. He looked down again, out past the enemy and over the outer palace. Spires stretched away in every direction. Smoke rose from all over the landscape. Some of it was new, the work of the daemon horde, but Terra had been burning for weeks. The Astronomican had failed. The galaxy was split in two. Behind them in the sky turned the great palace gyre, its deep eye marking out the throne room of the Emperor Himself.
‘Sir!’ A member of the Palatine Guard shouted over the din. He pointed downwards, to the left. Messinius followed his wavering finger. Three hundred feet below, daemons were climbing. They came upwards in a triangle tipped by a brute with a double rack of horns. It clambered hand over hand, far faster than should be possible, flying upwards, as if it touched the side of the towering gate only as a concession to reality. A Space Marine with claw locks could not have climbed that fast.
‘Soldiers of the Imperium! The enemy is upon us!’
He looked to the mortals. Their faces were blanched with fear. Their weapons shook. Their bravery was commendable nonetheless. Not one of them attempted to run, though a wave of terror preceded the unnatural things clambering up towards them.
‘We shall not turn away from our duty, no matter how fearful the foe, or how dire our fates may be,’ he said. ‘Behind us is the Sanctum of the Emperor Himself. As He has watched over you, now it is your turn to stand in guardianship over Him.’
The creatures were drawing closer. Through a sliding, magnified window on his display, Messinius looked into the yellow and cunning eyes of their leader. A long tongue lolled permanently from the thing’s mouth, licking at the wall, tasting the terror of the beings it protected.
Boltgun actions clicked. His men leaned over the parapet, towering over the mortals as the Lion’s Gate towered over the Ultimate Wall. A wealth of targeting data was exchanged, warrior to warrior, as each chose a unique mark. No bolt would be wasted in the opening fusillade. They could hear the creatures’ individual shrieks and growls, all wordless, but their meaning was clear: blood, blood, blood. Blood and skulls.