by Guy Haley
In the glass picture, Holos climbed Mount Calicium. The hero-saint had set out after a dream, disobeying the will of the Chapter Council to fulfil his quest. This was the fifth window in a series of seven Caedis had planned depicting Holos’s legend. These earlier parts of the story – Holos’s dream, the secret counsel of the Reclusiarch Shanandar, the climb begins, Holos’s battle with Lo-tan, lord of the astorgai – Caedis had completed already.
In this fifth window, Holos had reached the summit. His armour had been broken by the violence visited upon him by the astorgai that infested the mountain’s crags, so damaged that its spirit and aiding systems had died and its weight become a burden. What armour Holos’s could free had been thrown off. His arm hung uselessly at his side and his weapons were gone. But Holos will remained.
As Holos lay close to death upon Mount Calicium’s peak, a winged figure had appeared to him, revived him at the point of his death and given him the secret that would enable the Blood Drinkers to keep the Thirst at bay, if they dared.
Holos dared.
Brother Holos had returned weeks later to the fortress-monastery on San Guisiga, long after he had been given up for dead. Celebrations at the hero’s return turned to uproar when he revealed what he had been told. What the winged figure proposed nearly tore the Chapter in two, but those were desperate days, a time when more and more battle-brothers were falling into the Black Rage with every passing year, and the Thirst tormented them endlessly. Any measure to alleviate it was attempted, all without success.
These two events – Holos’s Return and the Blood Schism – they were to have been the conclusion of the panels, to surround the glass of Holos in Glory that dominated the wall of the Reclusiam at the fortress-monastery on San Guisiga.
Holos’s solution, the rite and the way of being he brought back with him from the summit of the volcano, had worked. The Blood Drinkers had since known an equilibrium that the other scions of Sanguinius could only pray for.
The Rite of Holos. The Blood Drinkers greatest secret and their greatest strength. Without it the Chapter would have descended into savagery and been lost. With it the brothers remained stalwart defenders of the Imperium. There was, however, a cost.
‘Celebrate the blood,’ murmured Caedis. He recited the catechism of Holos, his eyes fixed on the hero’s outstretched arm. ‘To deny the blood is to deny life, to deny life is to deny duty. To deny duty is to betray the Emperor. Betrayal is worse than damnation. Service has its price, and we willingly pay it.’
Caedis had completed this panel’s Holos some time ago, but a gap remained, the top left quarter of the work was unfinished. The mysterious winged figure who had come to Holos and which Caedis had intended as the focal point of the piece was entirely absent. He had worked on the window cycle for many years. During that time he had always had an idea of how he would portray the angel in this, the crucial panel, but as he had come to craft the being his vision had become elusive. Try as he might, he could not capture the image in his mind, the face he wished to show stayed constant in his imagination until he tried to express it, and then it would shift and change or ripple out of existence altogether, taunting him with inconstancy.
Caedis rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. He feared now, in his hearts, that he would never complete this panel, let alone the cycle. His tools were awkward in his fingers. When he went to his bench to cut the glass he broke it as often as not, sending him back to his crucible to cast more. His body trembled, his anger was never far from the surface of his thoughts. And the Thirst – hot, dry, his throat burning with it – he was never free of it, not for a moment.
He cast his mind back to Katria, the last world they had freed of the genestealer taint. In the defiled sanctum of that world’s saint, Epistolary Guinian had ripped the psychic scent of the brood from the genestealer young. This had enabled them to track down the hulk.
The first signs had come soon before planetfall. Dark dreams, an ague in his limbs. He prayed it would pass, that it was something else, an illness. But a Space Marine’s physiology did not allow him to become easily ill, and he had known from the first moment that he was succumbing to the Scion’s Curse. Not even after the rite had he known control there. His grasp of himself had slipped as they fought, and he had never truly regained it.
He thought of the seven Katrian soldiers they had been forced to sacrifice. Their deaths sorrowed him, but his usual pragmatic acceptance at the need was absent. He felt only untempered disgust.
Seven sacrifices. Seven panels. How apt, he thought bitterly.
He picked up a goblet from his work bench and drained it. The wine was of an exceptional quality, but did nothing to slake his thirst. Meagre sweat prickled his dry skin. When he closed his eyes he saw sheets of liquid red, blood pouring down glass.
He shook the visions away. ‘Table, flat,’ he said hoarsely. The cradle swung to the horizontal. A table rose from the floor and pressed itself under the glass. The finished design was sketched upon the surface of the table, although even there the angel was faceless, its outline grubby with constant erasure and re-pencilling. Lifting his tools, Caedis approached. In one hand he held a pair of pliers, their ends coated in yielding pseudoplastic, in the other a light hammer with a long head.
He rubbed at his sore eyes with the back of his hand again – Emperor they were so dry! – and looked to the bench where the glass pieces he had cut earlier were laid out. He selected one – part of the visitor’s face. He frowned, put it back and took up another, a piece of yellow glass intended to represent a section of the radiant aura of Holos’s messenger.
He set the pane carefully into the lead cames, bending their splayed edges until they were snug on the glass. He reached behind him and took up a horseshoe nail of mild steel. He placed its point in the corner where the came crossed another. He steadied his shaking hand, and carefully tapped the nail into the soft lead. His concentration wandered, rivers of red in his mind. He forced himself to continue, tapping nails into all the joins, fixing the glass and cames in place temporarily, ready for soldering later.
Another pane of glass, and another. The halo of light that Holos said had surrounded his visitor took shape, framing a face Caedis could still not quite call into being. Caedis relaxed into the task, delicate and precise as it was, so different to war. Gradually his need to drink of the life-fluid and feel the battle-joy receded and he mercifully lost himself in his work.
Who had been the one who aided Holos? No one truly knew. Some said it was the spirit of Sanguinius himself. Caedis was not sure if Holos had seen anything at all. Death can bring strange visions and inspirations of its own, it could have been that his gifts had saved him. The Emperor’s boons were potent, their workings mysterious.
Methodically he built the glass panel up, pane by pane, each small piece of carefully prepared glass slotting into the ‘H’ cross sections of the cames. Time passed, and his suffering eased. He dared to think that perhaps the Thirst would recede, and the descent into darkness would not come to pass. As dutiful a son of mankind as he was, the thought of sharing the same fate as Ancient Endarmiel, raging within his Dreadnought sarcophagus, filled him with horror; anything but that. He would die in battle if the Rage came upon him, that he silently vowed to himself.
He had another vow to fulfil first. After seeing the destruction the genestealer plague had left on Zanzib he had sworn to track down the source of the contagion and destroy it. Fifteen worlds and twenty-five years later, he had seen rebellion and strife as loyal subjects of the Imperium had been turned on one another by the pernicious psychic influence of the xenos. He had witnessed two planets rendered useless, another consumed entirely by the fires of Exterminatus. The loss of life angered him.
All that blood wasted, a less noble portion of his soul whispered.
Caedis growled. He ignored his unwanted thoughts. It was the only sure way to deal with them, to weather their obscenity until they abated. He set down his tools, judging enough of t
he glass in place for the time being. He fetched his soldering torch and a spool of soft alloy wire from the bench. The torch was fashioned as a leering devil, bent over at the waist so that its legs formed a handle, hands spread wide by its open mouth.
The worlds they had saved had been reduced, cities ruined, populations decimated. No doubt they would be bled further until the cripplingly slow machinery of the Administratum downgraded their tithe statuses. Caedis knew he could have sped that process, if he had wished.
But he could not. It was too much of a risk.
He ignited the torch. A thin white flame shot from the mouth of the devil.
He had no choice. Contacting the Inquisition would have been the most effective, they could have sped up reclassification and lessened the burdens of the affected worlds, and many would say they should have been informed of such a widespread genestealer plague.
Caedis would not, could not, petition the Inquisition or any other Imperial body for aid. Even calling for help from other Space Marines to destroy the hulk had been a risk he had agonised over for long days.
He had done all he could, sending astropathic messages to the sector and segmentum capital worlds. He prayed nightly that it would be enough.
If he did not end this by the purging of the hulk, the agents of the Inquisition would be drawn here soon anyway. The worlds affected had been of low importance, but so many had been tainted, and the track of the hulk propelled it closer to the densely populated system of Vol Secundus every time it drifted back out of the warp. The Inquisition’s attention would swing implacably toward the sector and his Chapter. He could not allow the Blood Drinkers to become entangled with them. They would not approve of the Rite.
Solder melted under the spike of the fire. He dripped it onto the joints of the cames expertly.
A chime sounded at the door. Caedis’s body-serf answered. A stick thin, anaemic man, thin arms covered in metal tubing. He struggled as he pulled open the wooden inner door. The serf bowed to the visitor.
‘Lord Reclusiarch Mazrael, my lord,’ announced the serf
‘Lord Caedis,’ said the Reclusiarch.
‘Brother,’ said the Chapter Master. He did not look up from his work. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
Mazrael walked around the table where Caedis worked, examining the glass. ‘Lord, brother, I come here as your guide and confessor. Are you well?’
‘As well as can be expected,’ said Caedis.
‘My lord, would you tell me something?’ said Mazrael carefully.
Caedis sighed. He flicked the solder torch off with his thumb and straightened to address the Reclusiarch. Like him, Mazrael was stripped to the waist, revealing the mark of chaplaincy emblazoned across his chest. San Guisiga was a hot, volcanic world, criss-crossed with lava rivers as bright as blood. The planet was a furnace, their dress reflected this.
‘Is there anything other than the one great burden that hangs over us, Lord Reclusiarch?’
‘The Thirst,’ Mazrael folded his arms over his chest. ‘It troubles you?’
Caedis shrugged.
‘It troubles us all, my lord, we should perform the rite again soon.’
Caedis continued working. Mazrael watched him for a moment.
‘You work, that is good. Artistry is the great foe of savagery,’ said the Reclusiarch.
‘How goes the mission?’ said Caedis. He reached for another pane of glass, and set about its placement.
‘This is why I visit. There is no word as yet, my lord, as to its ultimate success. The Adeptus Mechanicus have activated their pulse detonators and received an answer from the machine the magos, Nuministon, took with him into the hulk. If everything has gone to plan, then our brothers and the Novamarines were in place to record and process the seismic data and are returning. I thought I would inform you, lord.’
‘Good. No news is oftentimes good news.’
‘They are deep in the hulk, lord. Should they be in difficulty we would not hear their calls for aid, nor would we be able to aid them.’
‘I am aware of this.’ Caedis set a glass piece into place, a brown-grey shard that would delineate part of Mount Calicium’s slopes.
‘You would not rather be aboard the bridge, directing the effort?’
‘Brother Mazrael, three hundred years you have known me, and you ask such questions? What would you know?’
‘I would know only what I ask, my lord.’
‘This mission is the honour of the Novamarines to lead. It does not play to our strengths. Such a mission requires stealth and caution, not the charge of glory or the swift unsheathing of blades. I gladly leave it to Captain Galt, it suits the temper of the Novamarines better.’
‘Disagreeable traits, lord. Better to meet the foe head on.’
‘You sound like Sanguinary Master Teale today, Reclusiarch Mazrael. Maybe they are, but they are necessary traits.’
‘I test you lord, as we all must be tested. Stealth and ferocity, forethought and valour, all and more are weapons in the great armoury of the Adeptus Astartes,’ he paused. ‘It upsets you though, to allow them to be first aboard. I can feel it.’
‘Does it not upset you?’
‘As you aver, my lord, let the tool selected be fit for the task. You would not attempt placement of your glass with a power fist. Emotion and pride is a poor driver of strategy. We must save our passion for combat. Before, there is time to be circumspect.’
‘Precisely so, Reclusiarch.’
‘But lord,’ Mazrael moved closer. ‘I suspect that is not why you are here in your chambers and not upon the bridge. It is not your nature to stand back from a mission, even if you have delegated it rightly to another.’
‘Ah, so I see you have paid attention.’
‘Nor is this your normal attitude. Where is your grace and your kindness today, lord? Such flippancy is… unbecoming to you.’
Caedis placed his glass, took up his hammer, tapped in nails around it, took up another small pane. He turned it about in his fingers, not meeting the Chaplain’s eyes.
‘Do you think the Thirst drowns my finer qualities, Reclusiarch? Am I losing myself? You are wise, tell me what you see.’
Mazrael made a noise in his throat. When he spoke again, he did so carefully. ‘It is my role, lord, to be the custodian of the souls of our brethren. Your behaviour aboard Novum in Honourum was unusual. I am attuned to the changes that precede the fall to the ravages of the Thirst and the birth-pangs of the Black Rage, you know that aside from the performance of the rite, this is my duty above all other duties.’
‘And you see them in me now, Mazrael?’
‘Lord Caedis, please…’
Caedis could barely keep the tension from his voice. ‘I am well in body, mind and spirit, Reclusiarch Mazrael, truly. Soon we will perform the rite and all will be well with me and with our brethren. Tell me that you are untroubled. Tell me that there is not another brother aboard this fleet who does not feel the pangs of the Thirst.’
‘I carry the burden, as do we all, lord,’ admitted Mazrael.
‘There we have it then. I will be well.’
Caedis raised his head from his work. He smiled at the Chaplain. ‘Once we have performed the rite, we will all be well. I work to find focus before the real fight begins. Let our allies deal with the first sortie, these little brothers of Ultramar. Let them have their glory. When the time comes, we shall show them the correct way to defeat the foes of mankind; at close quarters, with blade and sinew. And this greater battle, the coming assault, it offers such perfect opportunity for intimate slaughter, does it not?’
‘Yes, lord,’ the Reclusiarch bowed his head briefly. His hands fell to his side. ‘Then I must be away. I go to speak with Sanguinary Master Teale about the ritual. Subjects must be selected. As you say, lord, the time approaches.’
Caedis’s smile dropped. ‘Unfortunately so, yes.’
‘Do not grieve for those who give themselves. They serve in their way so that we might
serve in ours, lord. All men are servants of the Emperor, and pay fealty in whatever way they can. By the blood of the loyal servants of the Emperor are the stars kept pure; our blood, and that of others.’
Mazrael withdrew, Caedis’s body-serf holding open the door for him. The Reclusiarch paused on the threshold of the door.
‘Will you take the black and red?’ asked Mazrael. ‘When the time comes, lord? Or will you seek the Emperor’s mercy? You have but to ask for either, as is your right.’
‘Neither, my friend. Not yet, not yet, and not for some time to come,’ Caedis said.
Mazrael gave a curt nod. ‘I pray it so, my lord.’ He departed.
The door shut, and Caedis let out a long gasp. He shook with the effort of controlling himself. The pane of glass he held in his hand slipped from his fingers and clinked upon the unfinished work. He grasped the table and shuddered. His skin itched, unable to perspire properly, he felt terribly hot. His throat burned horribly.
‘My lord, are you well?’
Caedis forced himself to look up. ‘Yes, Porphyrio, I…’ Caedis stopped. His serf stood close by, unsure whether to approach or not. Caedis’s eyes ran over the serf’s body, past the blood tubes and letting ports that covered his skin, until they came to rest on the man’s neck. There, the smallest movement, the pulse of an artery. He watched it twitch, twitch, twitch…
‘My lord?’
‘Leave me,’ the Chapter Master said urgently.
‘Lord?’
‘Get out! Now! Go!’ he shouted so loudly Porphyrio shrank backwards, stumbling over his own feet.
Caedis gripped the table edge so tightly the frame holding his work buckled. Whether he was steadying or restraining himself he did not know.
The window within took the brunt of his agonies. There was the sharp crack of glass giving way. Caedis looked down at the panel. A line ran through Holos, across his chest and the arm pointing toward the angel Caedis knew he would never finish.