Just like the crusade.
‘It will stay like this.’
Raine turns at the sound of Veris Drake’s voice. The Lord-Marshal has one of her arms bound in a sling, and she leans on a finely made cane as she approaches Raine. With her are General-Primary Hu-Sul of Gholl, and High-King Araxis. They too are injured. Exhausted.
They are all that remains of Bale Stars High Command.
Drake puts out her uninjured arm and brushes her fingertips across the damaged marble.
‘To repair the damage would be to forget,’ Drake says. ‘And we must never forget.’
Raine nods.
‘But we must rebuild,’ Drake says. ‘The crusade must endure. In order for that to happen, the truth about Serek cannot be allowed to spread. It would destroy morale. Destroy everything we have given so much to save.’
Raine feels hollow. ‘So, he is to be given a hero’s death,’ she says.
Drake nods.
‘And those who know the truth?’ Raine says, coldly. ‘Will they be offered the same?’
High-King Araxis chuckles at that. ‘You were right about her, Veris,’ he says. ‘She is much like Thema.’
Raine glares at him. Drake waves her hand before she can speak.
‘We have given much thought to it,’ Drake says. ‘Any complicit in Serek’s actions will be sentenced, but there will be no more deaths for the loyal. You and your Antari have already paid dearly enough.’
Drake puts her hand on Raine’s shoulder and for a moment Raine feels as though she could be a child again, standing in the grand hall decorated in her mother’s name. But this day is different. This hall is decorated with damage, and the Bale Stars have lost more than just one hero.
‘You dragged Serek into the light through sheer will and devotion,’ Drake says. ‘And those things should never be wasted. You will continue to serve, as your regiment will.’
Her hand falls away again.
‘After all,’ she says, ‘we still have a crusade to fight. In the Emperor’s name.’
Raine nods. She feels tears threaten at the corner of her eyes, from exhaustion, and agony.
But most of all, from pride.
‘In the Emperor’s name,’ she says.
Steadfast, after
Severina Raine stands alone in the vast, dark shadow of the Hero’s Mount and watches the engraving servitor slowly cut her sister’s name into the marble. She is dressed in plain training clothes, and not her uniform. She does not carry her weapons. In this, she is here as a sister. As a good heart, and nothing more. Devotional candles flicker in the cold wind as the blade cuts the shapes of Lucia’s name. It reminds Raine of doing the same to the timepiece, all those years ago. Of trying to let go.
Only this time, it feels as though she actually can.
She knows that Fel is there before she catches sight of him out of the corner of her eye. He doesn’t say a thing, just stands beside her as the servitor cuts the name and as dust from the marble falls like snow and those candles continue to flicker. Then it is done and the servitor folds back its arms and moves along the mount. It will never be short of names to carve.
Raine takes the timepiece from her pocket and looks at it. At the crack in the face and the way the case has buckled and tarnished. At the name, carved into the brass. She feels the steady ticking against her palm, soft and even, like a heartbeat. Then Raine closes her hand around it and walks over to the wall. She puts the timepiece down amongst the candles and picts and letters for the lost then runs her thumb over the case one last time, before stepping back again.
‘That’s it done,’ she says, and the words apply to so many things. ‘It will be strange to go and leave it here. To leave her here.’
‘Think of it not as leaving her, but as letting her rest,’ Fel says.
Raine nods. Her eyes sting, as if from the wind.
‘It’s good to have you back,’ she says. ‘To have you here, for this.’
‘I wouldn’t have been anywhere else,’ he says. ‘I will stand with you always. Until the end.’
Raine turns to look at him. Fel is without his carapace armour, just dressed in plain fatigues with the sleeves rolled back. The metal of his augmetic arm reflects the candlelight.
‘Let me see,’ she says.
He offers her his hand, and she takes hold of it in her own. The augmetic is a good one, well made and strong, but Raine feels grief over it nonetheless. Guilt.
‘It’s a lot to lose,’ she says, and she lets go.
Fel shrugs his shoulders. There’s a softening in his grey eyes. ‘I can think of much worse things,’ he says.
‘I am sorry for keeping the truth from you,’ Raine says.
‘You don’t need to apologise for doing what’s right,’ he says. ‘Or for being strong enough to do it.’
Raine can’t think of how to answer that. Instead, she reaches out and touches his face, tracing the shape of that old scar that runs down his cheek to his jawline.
‘I have never told you exactly what you mean to me,’ she says.
He smiles, just a little, then puts out his hand and brushes her hair back, away from her face.
‘Yes, you have,’ he says, softly, and in that moment, they aren’t soldiers. They aren’t serving. She is not an officer, and neither is he.
They are just souls.
A crusade to fight
On board the Pyre’s Light, the Antari induct their new blood. Swear them into squads and give them their marks and their myths. Raine hears it and sees it as she makes her way back to her posted quarters. Later, the Antari will fight for the joy of it, as they always do on the nights before a deployment, because it is the way of things. Even though Raine can never partake in that, or any of their other rites, she finds it a comfort. There is value in things that endure despite hardship.
Raine lets herself into her quarters and the overhead lumens activate to reveal two figures waiting for her. Before she can process who it is, she pulls her pistol and points it.
‘Come now, Severina,’ says Lord-Marshal Veris Drake. ‘We are all friends here.’
Raine lowers her pistol and holsters it, but she doesn’t lower her guard, because Drake’s words aren’t entirely true.
Because the other person in the room is Lukas Vander.
‘Raine,’ he says, in that same cold way he always does, though there is less disdain in it than there was once. Than there was before Serek.
Raine pulls the bulkhead door closed behind her and spins the lock.
‘To what do I owe this visit?’ she asks.
Drake gets up from the folding chair she is sitting on. She has to lean on her cane to do it, because the damage done during the fight on the Bale’s Heart could not be entirely undone.
‘I will be blunt,’ Drake says, as if Raine would ever expect differently from her. ‘High Command is weak. The command echelons are a mess. We have never been more vulnerable.’
Raine narrows her eyes. ‘But that is not why you are here,’ she says. ‘And it is certainly not why he is here.’
‘In that, you are correct,’ Vander says. ‘And believe me, I am not here by choice, either.’
Drake gives him a withering look. ‘Enough, Lukas,’ she says. ‘I am here because I do not believe that corruption within the crusade died with Alar Serek. Because I need watchful eyes, and faithful hearts. I need those that I can trust to seek it out.’
Raine frowns. ‘We are already tasked with guarding the souls of our regiments,’ she says. ‘We will not fail in that.’
‘Of course,’ Drake says. ‘But I need you to guard more than just the souls of your regiments. I need you to do so for the crusade, and I want you to begin with this.’
She takes something out of the pocket of her robe and places it in Raine’s hand. Something that Raine has not se
en since she gave it to Mardan Tula, what seems like a lifetime ago. An auditory damper disc that Tula could not tell her the origin of. Not because he didn’t know, but because it was beyond classified.
‘And if I refuse?’ Raine asks.
‘We both know that you won’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Raine asks.
‘Because I know you, Severina Raine. Because you are not the kind to refuse a duty, or back down from a trial.’
Drake smiles then. Not that narrowing of her eyes, but a real smile.
‘Because you are a commissar,’ she says.
Acknowledgements
Throughout the process of writing Honourbound, and all of the stories that came before, I was variously buoyed, supported and on occasion outright held up by a good many kind hearts. It would be remiss not to acknowledge that, so here goes.
To my husband, for being vastly understanding, answering a million questions and untangling the tangles. Oh, and for all of those cups of tea.
To my family, for their unceasing encouragement, and for setting me off right in the first place. I wouldn’t be where I am without you.
To Kat, Michael, Kate, Hannah, Amy, Jo and Dany, for always listening, and always lifting me. To Toby and Jan, because our ill-fated NaNo pact made me realise just how much I was capable of. To Neil, Callum and the rest of the writing circle crew. And Alan, who started all of that, and never did anything but inspire. To John, for sitting down with me in Bugman’s and asking me what it’s all about. And to Nick, for editorial excellence, masses of support along the journey and for putting so much faith in me.
Thanks, too, are owed to the Black Library team, for every bit of input and effort from inception to completion. To Marc, for a mind-blowing piece of cover artwork (I mean, seriously, close the book and look at it), and to Rach for managing that project with such care. And of course, thanks and intense hand-wavery are due to Mike and the Games Workshop studio, for bringing Raine to life in a way I never could have imagined possible.
Writing lists like these is tricky, because there’s no capturing every kindness, but trust me in knowing that you are all seen, recognised, and appreciated in spades.
Thank you.
About the Author
Rachel Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Honourbound, and the short stories ‘Execution’ and ‘A Company of Shadows’, featuring the character Commissar Severina Raine. She has also written the short story ‘Dirty Dealings’ for Necromunda, as well as a number of other Warhammer 40,000 short stories including ‘The Third War’ and ‘Dishonoured’.
An extract from Anarch.
Under the watchful glare of mosaic saints, the floor was a lake of blood.
The saints were ancient and Imperial, and their names were mostly forgotten. Tesserae were missing in places, making their shapes ill-defined, their features indistinct, their frozen, pious gestures vague. But their eyes remained, weary eyes that had seen long histories pass, with all the blood and loss that histories claim as their price.
Still, they seemed appalled. The eyes of some were wide, in astonishment or horror; in others, they were half-closed in denial. Some looked away entirely, as if it was too much to bear, diverting their gaze to the distance, perhaps to some golden light of promise that might appear on a far horizon and spare them from witnessing more atrocity.
The blood was shin-deep. It had been dammed inside the great chamber’s floor by the short flights of ouslite steps that rose to each entry. It was bright, like a glossy red mirror, rippled by the movement in the room, glinting in the torchlight. It had frothed and clotted into curds around the piled bodies. Half-submerged, soaked in blood, they seemed like tumbled island outcrops rising from a red sea, or moulded plastek forms lifting from run-off liquid composite on a manufacturing rack.
The hot stink of it was unbearable.
The screams were worse.
Damogaur Olort oversaw the work, hands behind his back, barking orders to his sonpack. Sons of Sek brought the captives in one by one. Some struggled and fought, shrieking and spitting obscenities. Others came placidly, stunned by the fate that was overwhelming them. Each of the Sons had made more than one visit to the chamber, and their ochre battle gear was dappled with gore. From the very sight of them, any prisoner brought up from the pens knew what awaited them.
Even when they fought and cursed, and had to be beaten and dragged, the sight and smell of the chamber silenced them. Some fell mute, as if dazed. Others wept. A few prayed.
The chamber was the inner precinct of the Basilica of Kiodrus on Sadimay Island. A holy place. That it had been transmuted into a hell was too much for most of the prisoners to bear.
Olort studied the next captive as he was brought in. The man stumbled, splashing through the blood, as though led to a baptismal pool against his will.
‘Da khen tsa,’ Olort said. Hold him.
The Sons, big brutes, their faces covered by glowing optic units and the human-hide leatherwork that stifled their mouths, obeyed, dragging the man upright. Olort approached, noting the insignia and unit marks of the captive, the torn and filthy state of his uniform. The man flinched as Olort lifted his dog tags to get his name. Kellermane. There was a paper tag pinned to the left breast of the man’s tunic. It read ‘Captured near the Tulkar Batteries,’ in handwritten Sanguinary block-script.
Olort saw a tear running from the man’s eye, and wiped it away with his fingertip. The almost tender gesture left a smudge of blood on the man’s cheek.
Kellermane. Artillery officer. Captain. Helixid.
‘Kell-er-mane,’ Olort said, switching to the clumsy language of the foe, of which he had some small measure. ‘An offer. Renounce your god. Assent now, pledge fellowship to He whose voice drowns out all others, and keep your life.’
The captive swallowed hard, but didn’t reply. He stared as if he didn’t understand.
Olort tried to look encouraging. He had unclasped his leather mouth guard so that the captives could see and appreciate the honesty of his smile.
‘Cap-tain Kell-er-mane,’ he said. ‘Repudiate, and pledge. Thus, life is yours.’
Kellermane mumbled something. Olort leant in to hear.
‘Join you?’ Kellermane asked in a tiny voice.
‘Yes.’
‘A-and you won’t kill me?’
Olort looked solemn, and nodded.
‘Th-then I swear,’ stammered the captive. ‘Yes. Please. Yes. I w-will s-serve your Anarch…’
Olort smiled and stepped back, the blood pool swirling around his boots.
‘Vahooth ter tsa,’ said Olort. Bless him.
One of the Sons took out his ritual blade, the hooked skzerret of the Sanguinary Worlds, and opened the captive from throat to sternum with one downward slash. The man convulsed, useless noises of dismay and loss coming from his mouth, and collapsed. Arterial spray hit the temple wall and jetted across the faces of disgusted saints.
The Sons let the body fall.
How simply they fold, Olort thought, when faced with something so brief as death. Where is their trumpeted mettle? He whose voice drowns out all others has no use for cowards.
Olort resumed his place, hands behind his back.
‘Kyeth,’ he said. Next.
The Sons waded back across the chamber and left. Two more entered, a sirdar and a packson flanking another captive.
This one didn’t look promising to Olort. His black hair was matted with blood and dirt, and he evidently carried several minor injuries. But at least he walked unaided. The Sons didn’t have to drag him or frog-march him.
Olort approached, noting how the prisoner refused to make eye contact. There were no rank pins or regimental patches on the man’s torn black fatigues, and the paper label was missing.
Olort glanced at the sirdar.
‘Khin voi trafa?�
� Where is his label?
The sirdar shrugged apologetically.
‘Let’he het?’ Olort asked. Circumstances?
‘Tyeh tor Tulkar, damogaur magir,’ the sirdar replied, and continued to explain that the captive had been taken alive after fierce fighting in the boat-docks near the Batteries. He had fought, the sirdar said, like a cornered ursid.
Interesting after all, thought Olort. A man of courage. He reached for the captive’s dog-tags. The captive did not flinch.
Mkoll. Recon. Sergeant. Tanith First.
‘Mah-koll,’ Olort said, in the foe’s ugly tongue again. ‘An offer. I make this now. Renounce your god. Pledge fellowship to He whose voice drowns out all others, and keep your life.’
The captive did not reply.
‘Repudiate and pledge,’ said Olort. ‘Do you understand?’
The captive remained silent.
Olort considered things for a moment. The man was evidently strong. He had borne a great deal. He had not broken. This was the mettle that the Sons watched for. He whose voice drowns out all others had no place for cowards.
But some could be too brave. This man stank of a silent defiance that would not submit and could not be broken. That was the way of things. Most were too weak. Some were too strong.
Olort glanced at the sirdar, who already knew what was coming and was unfastening his skzerret.
‘Vahooth ter tsa,’ Olort instructed.
The blade flashed up. Olort abruptly stopped the sirdar’s hand.
He had noticed something.
Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Page 41