Garro: Vow of Faith

by James Swallow

  As Sindermann nodded, a question fell from him. ‘Can that witch-gun kill you?’

  ‘I will find out,’ Garro managed. He came about, each step jamming razors into the dozens of open wounds across his torso and his limbs, and advanced on the assassin through the wreaths of dirty smoke.

  Sickly vapour streamed from the mouth of the glittering glass pistol as Kell brandished it toward him. ‘I think I understand how the Clade Eversor find such joy in their kills,’ he said, as if speaking to some unseen audience. ‘Every murder I made before, it was distant and cold. I saw their faces but I never really knew the moment of death.’ He showed Garro the daemonic gun. ‘This makes it different. When you are close, you can taste it. It allows you to love the act.’

  ‘You are quite mad,’ spat Garro. ‘Horus did that? Or did he just make use of it?’

  Kell’s face twisted. ‘He let me see. And I’ve seen you dead, Death Guard. Your heart broken and bleeding black.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he allowed, fighting back a weariness that reached up from the darkness. ‘But it will not be your hand behind it, murderer.’

  The assassin bared yellowed teeth in a feral snarl and took the daemon weapon in a two-handed grip, bracing to aim toward him. The square-cut shape of the muzzle undulated and snapped open into a glass flower, its maw widening in a funnel of crystal petals. Garro saw baleful fire shimmer within the impossible spaces of the gun’s interior a split-second before it vomited forth a great comet of flames. The air screamed as it was torn open by the power of such elemental horror forcing its way into reality.

  A mass of living fire, dancing and swooping above him, came at Garro in a blinding rush. It had no shape that could be held in the mind for more than a few moments, shifting between forms that could have been avian, arachnid or humanoid.

  There might have been a time – before becoming a Knight Errant, before the Warmaster’s betrayal – when Nathaniel Garro would have beheld this horror and wondered how he would fight something so utterly unreal. He was no longer that man.

  This war – Horus’ war – had changed him in ways he had never expected, and in this second Garro realized that whatever doubts he had were now ashes. They had burned away, just like the skin across his body. He was free of them.

  He did not question how he would fight the daemon. He would destroy it as he had every other enemy put before him. With the weapon in my hand and the strength of my soul.

  Garro triggered the power field surrounding Libertas’ blade at its maximum potentiality. Lethal jags of captured lightning scintillated along the length of the sword, generated and collimated by ancient, time-lost technology. This weapon had brought down tyrants, it had slaughtered rampaging beasts, ended the lives of traitors and, when called upon, given the Emperor’s Peace. One more monster would not be its match.

  Ignoring all sense of caution, Garro threw himself at the fire-form as it swept down on him. Raising his power sword high into a jousting thrust, he pushed himself past the pain from the lashes of flame bombarding his tormented body and let the point of the blade find the pulsing heart of the daemon. The creature, a primitive predator-form from the abyssal deeps of the immaterium, did not possess the wit to realize that the legionary had used its own momentum against it.

  Libertas plunged into the core of the abhorrent form and the energy resonating through its blade flashed free in a catastrophic shock of unleashed power. Unknowable science from the age of Old Night met unreal anti-life from another dimension and cancelled out its existence. Blue aurorae rippled through the fire-daemon, and with a cry that chilled the blood it combusted into a haze of orange-black embers. Whatever malevolent quintessence had motivated the creature was sent screaming back to the warp, and Garro’s sword became dead metal once again, its power drained for now.

  ‘No!’ Kell shook his head wildly, whatever brief clarity his tortured mind had known now dispersed like the daemon. He raised the gun again, aiming at Garro’s chest. ‘You should die! You are supposed to die, that is how it will be, I have done it before, I will do it again–’

  ‘Enough,’ snarled the legionary, and Libertas sang through the choking air on a downward arc. Powered or not, the age-old sword was still a formidable tool of battle. The cut cleanly severed Kell’s hand at the wrist, the shock knocking him back as the lump of flesh and glass spun to the deck.

  The assassin’s howls echoed off the curved walls, but Garro ignored him. He watched as the severed hand flopped back and forth of its own accord like a landed fish, dragging the profane crystal mass of the gun with it. Meat and bone became molten, changing shape once more. The weapon took control of the flesh and remade itself into a form that resembled a scarab beetle, grimy fingers for legs and a vitreous block for a shell.

  Garro stepped to the thing and impaled it on the tip of his sword before it could completely reconfigure itself. It burst in a welter of blood, oil and silvery pus. For good measure, the legionary stamped what remained into the deck plates, grinding it to nothing beneath his heel.

  A trail of dark fluid led him to the assassin, as the man stumbled across the makeshift chapel toward the altar. ‘She is gone,’ Garro called after him. ‘You failed in your mission.’

  ‘Not the first time,’ gasped Kell, refusing to accept defeat. ‘No.’

  Fatigue pulled at Garro, and he knew it was his body’s energy racing to repair the grievous damage wrought by the witchfire. He shook it off and aimed a finger at the other man. ‘Eristede Kell. I name you traitor. Stand and answer for your crime.’

  ‘Traitor?’ echoed the assassin. ‘We are all traitors in the end, legionary! We are all betrayed and then the betrayer… You are no different than I!’

  Garro’s lip curled. ‘I did not swear fealty to the first primarch to turn against his father!’

  ‘But you did turn against your father!’ Kell shot back, cradling the bloody stump of his wrist close to his chest. ‘Your kinsmen too! Traitor… What does the word mean? It changes colour depending on where you stand… All that anyone can know is that we will eventually be betrayed…’ His words trailed off into a painful wheeze. ‘Are you prepared to save her?’

  The question came from nowhere. ‘Save who?’

  ‘You know! Are you ready to surrender everything for her?’ Kell looked away, his watery gaze suddenly lost and distant. ‘I was. All for nothing.’

  Garro’s sword turned in his hand, shifting to a backhand grip as he closed the distance between them. ‘This ends now.’ He raised the weapon, point downward.

  ‘It won’t,’ said Kell, but then the blade dropped through his clavicle and down inside his ribcage, cutting his heart in two and freeing the assassin from whatever bargain he had made with the Warmaster.

  Alone now, with only the murdered and the ashen fires surrounding him, Garro withdrew the sword from the corpse and watched it fall.

  SEVEN

  Betrayal

  Of purpose

  Never seen

  The burn-pain lingered along with the stench of the dead, pressing into Garro with a throbbing ache. A cursory search of the makeshift chapel found not a single follower there still alive, and with a grim cast to his face, the legionary left it behind.

  He crossed through the blackout sails and followed a route through the derelict overflow conduits, the path that he had ordered Sindermann to take toward the upper tiers of Hesperides. With each step, he wondered if he would come across more flame-crisped bodies like those killed by the daemon-serpents. His thoughts tormented him as he walked, suggesting ways of death for the Saint and the others that were manifold and horrible.

  He recalled Sigismund, and the Imperial Fist’s entreaty to protect Keeler at all costs. If she perished under his watch, Garro knew that the Templar would hunt him down and see him pay for her loss.

  These were the thoughts that plagued him as he ascended a vent shaft by means of an iron lad
der. Wan light streamed down on him from an open grille at the shaft’s exit, and presently Garro emerged on to a shadowed landing platform that extended out from the western side of the orbital plate.

  He took a deep breath of damp air, and there was faint, brackish moisture on his face. A fine rain was falling. The industrial aertropolis’ weather screen was poorly maintained, and as Hesperides skirted a dense cloud formation, some of it wandered in past the city limits. Garro nodded to himself. That would be useful; it could cover an escape.

  ‘Sindermann.’ He spoke the iterator’s name aloud, and the word was a husky growl from his smoke-scarred throat. ‘Show yourself.’

  He glanced around, finding a pair of stubby oxy-tankers parked line abreast in the middle of the platform, little more than clusters of spherical pressure tanks in winged frames with gravitic motors to get them in the air. They would do as a way off this wretched place.

  Garro sensed the survivors before he saw them, hearing the rattle and creak of their footsteps over the rusting deck. Limping badly, Kyril Sindermann emerged from the shadows. He was leaning heavily on a young man, one of the armed posse of believers that had surrounded Garro when he first arrived. With them were a handful of others who crowded an unseen figure in the middle of their group. Zeun was leading these followers, and she was almost corpse-pale, her tunic covered with drying blood. Still, she walked toward him with brittle strength, those hard eyes once more daring him to cross her.

  ‘You live, then,’ he said, with a nod. ‘I thought I saw Kell’s accomplice take you down.’

  ‘Kell?’ she echoed, making it a challenge. She waved a hand in front of her face, mimicking a mask. ‘That one?’

  He nodded again. ‘That one. I killed him.’

  ‘Good…’ Zeun was going to say more, but she trailed off as she got a better look at him. He had to appear as something barely alive to them, the burns on his body so fierce that they had only ever seen the like upon the dead. She struggled with her reaction – was that disgust or pity? Amazement or revulsion?

  Garro peeled open part of his body-glove, where it had become stuck to his bloody torso, to remove an object he had placed there. With care, he cleaned it off. ‘Here. You should have this.’ He handed it to her, and Zeun looked down at the shimmerknife dagger lying across her palm.

  She held it like it was a poisonous snake, fascinated as much as she was repelled by it. After a moment, Zeun took the weight of the energized blade in her hand and rolled it in her fingers. Garro could see that she had the skills of a street fighter, and the pragmatism too. Some might have baulked at taking the very weapon that had almost ended them, but not this one.

  From where he stood, he could see the cut in Zeun’s tunic where the blade had gone in. If there had been a wound behind it, that injury was gone now. ‘You said I owed you a weapon.’ He gestured at the blade. ‘My debt is paid.’

  He didn’t linger to see if she had more to add, and turned toward Sindermann – but not before casting a glance at the knot of hooded believers. One among them seemed to move differently to the others. Keeler. Hiding in plain sight.

  ‘Captain,’ began the iterator, labouring a breath with the words he uttered. ‘What of our people…?’

  ‘None remain.’ He saw no merit in softening the blow. ‘Your secret church of Hesperides, such as it was, has suffered the same fate as the sanctuary in Afrik.’

  ‘And others too, that you know not.’ Saying the words aged Sindermann terribly, and his young companion had to hold him steady. ‘But the killers are dead. I heard you say that.’

  ‘These killers are dead,’ Garro corrected. ‘But there will be others. The archtraitor has many more broken souls to call upon.’ Frustration rose in him, his growl becoming harder and colder. ‘You should have listened to me.’ He turned and glared at the hooded figures. ‘Euphrati!’ barked Garro. ‘You should have listened!’

  The group parted and there she was in the middle of them. He wondered if they really thought the act of surrounding her with their frail human bodies would be armour enough to keep her safe.

  The Saint rolled back her hood and showed him a weeping face. ‘I did not want this,’ she breathed, coming to him. ‘I don’t want it to happen any more.’ She halted and looked up at the sky, as if seeing something Garro could not.

  He glanced at the iterator. ‘You must go into hiding, that is clear. I will stand with you. I have contacts. I will find us a safe haven.’

  ‘You would reject the Sigillite’s dominion over you?’ said Sindermann. ‘You would become a renegade?’

  ‘I will never reject Terra and the throne,’ Garro snapped back. ‘Lord Malcador, however…’

  But before his thought could fully form, the legionary felt the wet air around him take on a taut quality. He tasted ozone on his crackled lips and knew the familiar sensation for what it was – the precursor effect to a battlefield shock transit.

  He had Libertas clear of its sheath as the first emerald flash emerged out of nothing, across the platform past the prow of the second tanker. In the span of milliseconds, other motes of green lightning blinked into existence all around them, and then came a low crack of displaced air molecules as multiple teleport fields deposited a dozen faceless figures at all points of the compass.

  Garro wheeled, seeing human soldiers in blank-eyed carapace armour bearing high-power laser carbines. His gaze settled on their leader – a Space Marine in full Corvus-pattern war plate, a heavy bolt pistol already drawn and ready in his grip.

  Like the soldiers’, the other legionary’s armour was the shade of storm clouds and bereft of all sigils, honours or iconography – or at least, no marks that were immediately apparent to the eye. But if Garro had looked closely, he would have found the ghostly imprint of a stylized letter ‘I’ upon their shoulder pauldrons.

  The bolt pistol – the sole object that carried a splash of colour upon it – was a clue to the face behind the beaked helmet. Then, as the legionary advanced toward Garro, the way he moved confirmed his identity. ‘Ison? Malcador sent you, then?’

  Ison reached up and twisted off his helm as he walked closer, snapping it to a magnetic pad at his waist. The other legionary’s face was olive-hued and his eyes were dark and almond-shaped. A duelling scar ran the length of his jaw and it had not healed well, giving him a permanent half-scowl. The bolt pistol floated in his mailed fist, lazy and deceptive. Garro could almost believe it wasn’t aimed at him, but he had seen the warrior in action and knew how he fought.

  ‘Captain Garro,’ Ison said formally, giving him a slow look up and down, his gaze lingering on the worst of the burns. ‘Do you require an apothecary?’ His voice was a steady murmur.

  ‘I’m well enough to fight.’ He tightened his grip on his sword.

  Ison cocked his head, and as one the soldiers raised their rifles to firing stance. ‘Will it come to that?’

  ‘The choice is yours.’

  The other legionary released a weary sigh. ‘The order falls, Garro. Stand down. You are recalled to duty.’

  ‘Malcador tracked me…’ Garro’s lips thinned as he considered this turn of events. ‘He used me to find Keeler?’ He nodded toward the Saint, who had gathered Sindermann and Zeun to her.

  ‘He is the Sigillite,’ Ison replied, and tapped a long finger against his temple. ‘Did you ever think he would not know where you were?’

  ‘He sees so much, aye… But not enough to intervene below?’ Garro pointed at the deck, in the direction of the under-levels. ‘Or is it that he cares little for civilians who lose their lives daring to seek a different truth?’

  ‘I know nothing of what you speak.’ Ison’s expression remained neutral, and Garro realized he was telling the truth. The Knight Errant went on. ‘By the command of the Regent of Terra, you must stand down and allow the woman Keeler to be taken into Imperial custody. She won’t be harmed. No blood
will be shed… if there is co-operation.’

  Garro’s damaged features turned stony, and he let his weight shift away from his bionic leg. If it came to combat, he did not trust the replacement limb to work flawlessly after all the heat damage it had suffered. Libertas was at the ready. He could strike at any instant. ‘I do not wish to comply.’

  ‘Out of respect for what you have done for me, I suggest you reconsider that statement.’ Ison stiffened, tightening his grip on the pistol. ‘I say this for the final time, Captain. Stand down.’

  The sword began to move, but then Garro felt a delicate touch on the blackened flesh of his arm and he looked down to see Keeler’s hand resting there.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and all at once the air became slow and heavy. The gauzy haze of raindrops around them gained sudden definition as they were suspended, and every motion was arrested.

  He looked back to Ison and saw that the other legionary was as motionless as a statue. The solders and the believers, Sindermann and Zeun alike, all were frozen in a timeless instant.

  ‘How… are you… doing this?’

  There was a peculiar echo to his voice, the sound flat and contained.

  The Saint was pale, the effort taxing her greatly. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Don’t fight him, Nathaniel. That act cannot be called back.’

  ‘I have taken the lives of brother legionaries before,’ he said, regret weighing down the words.

  ‘Not like this. Ison is not your enemy.’ She gestured at the soldiers, whom Garro knew he would have to butcher to a man if it came to blades and guns. ‘They are only doing what they believe to be right, as you are.’

  He turned on her, Libertas dragging in the air as if moving through thick oil. ‘I did not protect you from Horus’ agents only to turn you over to the Sigillite! Malcador’s schemes are known only to him, and I will no longer place my trust nor yours in his hands! Not while he has so many secrets.’