Helsreach
Page 34
I am still laughing when the temple finally falls.
EPILOGUE
Ashes
They call it the Season of Fire.
The Ash Wastes are choking with dust from roaring volcanoes. Planet-wide, the picts show the same images, over and over. Our vessels in orbit watch Armageddon breathe fire, and send the images back to the surface, so that those there might witness the world’s anger in its entirety.
Fighting across most of the world is ceasing, not because of victory or defeat, but because there can be no arguing with Armageddon itself. The ash deserts are already turning dark. In a handful of days, no man or xenos beast will be able to breathe in the wastelands. Their lungs would fill with ashes and embers; their war machines would grind to a halt, fouled beyond use.
So the war ceases for now. It does not end. There is no tale of triumph and victory to tell.
The beasts stagger and crawl back to cities they have managed to hold, there to hide away from the Season of Fire. Imperial forces consolidate the territories to which they still lay claim, and drive the invaders out from those where the orks have managed to grasp no more than a weak hold.
Helsreach is one of these places. That necropolis, in which one hundred of my brothers lie dead alongside hundreds of thousands of loyal souls…
That tomb-city, so much of which is flattened by the devastation of two months’ road-by-road warfare, with no industrial output left at all…
Imperial tacticians are hailing it as a victory.
I will never again understand the humanity I left behind when I ascended to the ranks of the Templars. The perceptions of humans remain alien to me since the moment I swore my first oaths to Dorn.
But I will let the people of this blighted world claim their triumph. I will let the survivors of Helsreach cheer and celebrate a drawn-out defeat that masquerades as victory.
And, as they have requested, I will return to the surface once more.
I have something of theirs in my possession.
They cheer in the streets, and line Hel’s Highway as if in anticipation of a parade. Several hundred civilians, and an equal number of off-duty Guard. They stand in crowds, clustered either side of the Grey Warrior.
My helm’s aural receptors filter the noise of their cheering to less irritating levels, the way it would do if an artillery battery was shelling the ground around me.
I try not to stare at them, at their flushed faces, at their bright and joyous eyes. The war is over to them. They care nothing for the orbital images that show entire ork armies taking root in other hives. For the people of Helsreach, the war is over. They are alive, so they have won.
It is hard not to admire such simple purity. Blessed is the mind too small for doubt. And in truth, I have never seen a city resist invasion so fiercely. The people here have earned the lives they still have.
This part of the city, not far from the accursed docks, is relatively unscathed. It remained a stronghold firmly in Imperial control. I am given to understand that Sarren and his 101st fought here to the last day.
A gathering of figures clusters by the Grey Warrior. Most wear the ochre uniforms of the Steel Legion. One of them, a man known to me, beckons me over.
I walk to him, and the crowd erupts into more cheers. It is the first time I have moved in almost an hour.
An hour of listening to tedious speeches transmitted from the gathered group, over to a vox-tower nearby that blares the words across the sector.
‘Grimaldus, Reclusiarch of the Black Templars,’ the vox-voice booms. More cheers as I draw close. The soldier that beckoned to me offers quiet greetings.
Major, or rather, Colonel Ryken has regained much of his face since I last saw him. Burn scars spread across much of the remaining skin, but over half of his features are dull-metalled augmetics, including significant reconstruction to his skull. He makes the sign of the aquila, and only one of his hands is his own. The other is a skeletal bionic, not yet sheathed in synthetic skin.
I return the salute. The vox-speech – the speaker is a member of General Kurov’s staff I have never met before – drones on about my own heroism alongside the Steel Legion. As my name is shouted by thousands of humans, I raise my fist in salute to them all.
And all the while, I am thinking how my brothers died here.
Died for them.
‘Did Adjutant Quintus Tyro survive?’ I ask.
He nods, his ruined face trying to make a smile. ‘Cyria made it.’
Good. I am pleased for him, and for her.
‘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 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 humour him by doing the same.
‘Hello, hero,’ he grins up at me.
‘Greetings, Andrej.’
‘I like your armour. 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 Astartes armour 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 apologise 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 recognise 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.
‘Did you meet the fat priest?’ he asks. ‘Did you know him?’
‘I confess, I do not recall anyone by that name or descr
iption.’
‘He was a good man. You would have liked him. Very brave. He did not die in the battle. He was with the civilians. But he died two weeks after, from a problem with his heart. Ayah, that is unfair, I think. To live through the end and die at the new beginning? Not so fair, I am thinking.’
There is a twisted poetry to that.
I would like to speak words that comfort him. I would like to tell him I admire his courage, and that his world will survive this war. I want to speak with the ease Artarion would have done, and thank this soldier for standing with us when so many others ran. He honoured us all in that moment, as did the dying dockmaster, the prioress, and every other soul that faded from life on the night only I survived.
But I say nothing. Further conversation is broken by people chanting my name. How alien it sounds, voiced by human throats.
The orator whips the crowd up, speaking – of course – of the relics. They want to see them, and that is why I am here. To display them.
I signal the cenobyte servitors forward. Augmetic servants, vat-grown by the Chapter’s Apothecaries and augmented by Jurisian to haul the Temple’s artefacts. None of the mindless wretches bear a name; just a relic that represents all I could do to ease my guilt at such a shameful defeat.
The crowd cheers again as the servitors move from the vulture shadow of my Thunderhawk, each of the three carrying one of the artefacts. The ragged scraps of the banner. The cracked stone pillar, topped by the shattered aquila. The sacred bronze globe, sloshing with its precious holy water.
My voice carries with ease, amplified by my helm. The crowd quietens, and Hel’s Highway falls silent. I am reminded, against my will, of the impenetrable silence beneath the mountain of marble and rockcrete when the Temple came down upon us all.
‘We are judged in life,’ I tell them, ‘for the evil we destroy’.
Never my words. Always Mordred’s.
For the first time, I have an answer to them. A greater understanding. And my mentor… You were wrong. Forgive me, that it took so long to leave your shadow and realise it. Forgive me, that it took the deaths of my brothers to learn the lesson they each tried to teach me while they yet drew breath.
Artarion. Priamus. Bastilan. Cador. Nero.
Forgive me for living, while you all lie cold and still.
‘We are judged in life for the evil we destroy. It is a bleak truth, that there is nothing but blood awaiting us in the spaces between the stars. But the Emperor sees all that transpires in His domain. And we are judged equally for the illumination we bring to the blackest nights. We are judged in life for those moments we spill light into the darkest reaches of His Imperium.
‘Your world taught me this. Your world, and the war that brought me here.
‘These are your relics. The last treasures of the first men and women ever to set foot upon your world. They are the most precious treasures of your ancestors, and they are yours by right of legacy and blood.
‘I return them to you from the edge of destruction. And I thank you not only for the honour of standing by the people of this city, but for the lessons I have learned. My brothers in orbit have asked me why I dragged these relics from beneath the fallen Temple. But you have no need to ask, for you each already know the answer. They are yours, and no alien beast will deny the people of this world the inheritance they deserve.
‘I dragged these relics back into the sunlight for you – to honour you, and to thank you all. And in humility now, I return them to you.’
This time, when the cheers come, they are shaped by the orator. He uses the title I swore to High Marshal Helbrecht, standing before Mordred’s statue, that I would not refuse when it was formally awarded to me.
‘I am told,’ the High Marshal had said afterwards, ‘that Yarrick and Kurov have spoken with the Ecclesiarchy. You are being given the relics, to carry Helsreach’s memory and honour with you, in the Eternal Crusade.’
‘When I return to the surface, I will offer the icons back to the people.’
‘Mordred would not have done so,’ Helbrecht said, masking any emotion, any judgement, from me.
‘I am not Mordred,’ I told my liege. ‘And the people deserve the choice. It is for them that we waged that war, for them and their world. Not purely for the holy reaping of inhuman life.’
And I wonder now, as they chant my new title, what they will decide to do with the relics.
Hero of Helsreach, the crowd cheers.
As if there is only one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AARON DEMBSKI-BOWDEN is an English novelist with a half-Polish name. He’s been a deeply entrenched fan of Warhammer 40,000 ever since he ruined his copy of Space Crusade by painting the models with all the skill expected of an overexcited nine-year-old. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his fiancée Katie and their cat Loken, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere. His hobbies generally involve reading anything within reach, and helping people spell his surname.
To Katie, for saying yes.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2010 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan
Maps by Rosie Edwards and Darius Hinks
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