Deus Sanguinius

by James Swallow

  ‘Why would they do otherwise?’ Arkio said darkly. ‘Why would they doubt me?’

  ‘Dante did not witness your miracle,’ broke in Sachiel, ‘He would ask for proof…’

  ‘Proof?’ Arkio snapped, and his wings unfurled in a flash of white, his eyes shining with sudden intensity. ‘Proof denies faith, and faith is all that we are!’

  ‘You yourself said that Lord Dante has commanded the Blood Angels for over a millennium,’ Stele took a step closer to Arkio, ‘and some might argue, too long. Such a man would not step aside easily, Blessed, even in the face of such divinity as yours. And Mephiston…’ He shook his head. ‘The psyker they call the Lord of Death has always held himself to be the heir apparent to the mastery of the Chapter. These men… I would not vouch for their magnanimity in this matter.’

  Arkio shook his head again. ‘No. I will not hear this. What has happened to me is a blessing from the Emperor for every Blood Angel, for our entire Chapter, not just the Space Marines here on Shenlong and the crew of Bellus. I have been chosen, Stele. Chosen by fate to be the vessel for a power far greater than myself! Sanguinius makes himself known through me, returns to us after so long departed. I will not conceive that this marvel…’ He paused, his fangs bearing in a snarl as he fought down his anger. ‘That I will be the cause of a schism among my brothers. No! It shall not be so.’ In one single bound, Arkio stepped up on to the lip of the stone balcony and swept off it, a crash of air filling his wings. The golden figure dropped back into the arena, into the thunderous adulation of his warriors and his subjects.

  Stele watched him go, aware of Sachiel as the priest came closer. ‘Would that his wishes become reality,’ said the inquisitor gravely, ‘but it may not go as the Blessed would hope.’

  Sachiel had a faraway look in his eyes, as if the Apothecary’s mind was focussed on some distant vanishing point, on events yet to come. ‘You… could be right, lord inquisitor. If Dante denies the Ascension of Arkio, it will split the Blood Angels asunder.’ The sombre thoughts were hard for the priest to articulate. ‘There could be a… a civil war. A severing greater than anything our Chapter has ever known before.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Stele intoned, ‘and such a break would not be as congruous as those that created the Successor Chapters, the Blood Drinkers and the Flesh Tearers, the Angels Vermilion, Encarmine and Sanguine…’

  ‘We will find adherents in those bands,’ Sachiel said quickly, ‘once word spreads of the Blessed. If what you suspect comes to pass, Dante will be unable to deny the Rebirth when all our battle-brothers give credence to it.’

  The inquisitor gave a sigh. ‘Perhaps, Sachiel, perhaps. I hope that these dark possibilities we consider now remain just that – but if not, we must be prepared.’

  The priest watched Arkio as he swooped and dove over the great arena. ‘To do what, lord? To go to war with our kinsmen? I hardly dare to speak such a thing.’

  ‘If the Blood Angels on Baal are unwilling to accept Arkio for what he is, as the avatar of the Sanguine Messiah, they may need to be encouraged to believe.’ Stele met Sachiel’s gaze and held it with his cold, glittering eyes. ‘If they do not, then those who resist the divine design must be purged.’

  The High Priest replied with a slow, serious nod, and Stele drew away a smile.

  Rafen kept off the more heavily trafficked streets as much as he could, but eventually he was forced to walk out in the open, amid the endless confusion of markets, portable shrines and thronging Shenlongi citizens. He was on the far side of the Ikari fortress to the combat arena, but still the sounds of the chanting crowds were filling the air, humming up and down the octaves like distant surf breaking on a shore. The Space Marine spied several knots of excited natives clustered around jury-rigged speakers in shop doorways and windows, the sound boxes hastily tapped into the webs of lines from the factory-city’s vox-net. Tinny commentaries issued out of the speakers, encouraging hoots of excitement from some and groans from others. The fruits of wagers, dog-eared handfuls of Imperial scrip, changed hands as candidates for the Warriors of the Reborn died off or were chosen for the thousand.

  Rafen did his best to keep to the edges of the highway, head bowed and hood up; but there was little he could do to avoid towering over the civilians, the tallest of whom could barely reach the Space Marine’s shoulder. With awed whispers they parted in front of him like water flowing around a rock. Some of them, the more daring, would reach out and run a finger over the hem of his garment. He considered giving them a flash of his teeth and a snarl to keep them at bay; but what good would it do to instil an even greater fear of his kind in these people?

  Something crunched beneath the sole of his sandal and Rafen paused. With the tip of his foot he nudged a broken tin object out of the dirt. It had been cut from an old recaf can and bent into shape as… what? The Space Marine became aware of a skinny child watching him with an open, gap-toothed mouth. The street urchin was smeared with rusty dirt and bore a scarred cheek. In front of the child was a box filled with more tin shapes. Rafen looked closer. Some of the crafted things were crude copies of the Blood Angels crest, others a model of the Spear of Telesto, even a miniature figure of a winged Space Marine. He indicated the object at his feet. ‘You made this?’

  The child nodded once, with no change in expression. Rafen picked up the ruined effigy and deposited it back in the box. Closer, he could see that the juvenile was a girl. On the blemished side of her face she was missing a patch of hair. He nodded to himself; the child had been caught in the nimbus of a plasma shot. ‘You are lucky to be alive,’ he told her.

  She nodded again, and closed her mouth. On her dirty tunic, Rafen saw a rendition of the spear-and-halo badge that Arkio’s supporters were popularising and frowned. He surveyed the contents of her box, then looked up and met her gaze. ‘There are no icons of the Emperor here,’ he said quietly. ‘You will make no more of these others from now on, understand? Only symbols of the God-Emperor.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ At last she spoke, and it was with a piping, tremulous voice.

  Rafen turned and walked away, resuming his path toward the fortress. Behind him, the people on the street scrambled to press money into the girl’s hands, suddenly desperate to buy an icon that a Blood Angel had touched.

  Chaplain Delos was waiting for him at the foot of the fortress tower. ‘Rafen,’ the black-armoured priest beckoned him closer. ‘I did not see you at prayers–’

  ‘Forgive me, but I took my devotion alone today, Chaplain,’ he replied. ‘I required… solitude.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Delos. ‘The arming ritual demands your most serious mind. It is good that you have prepared.’ The priest walked him into the massive inner atrium of the fortress, past the metre-high piles of devotional objects and invocation plaques left by the citizens. ‘I know these times have been difficult for you.’

  Rafen said nothing and walked on.

  The Chaplain took his silence for assent. ‘The deaths of your Captain Simeon on Cybele, the fall of Koris to the red thirst…’ He shook his head. ‘And your sibling… None of us have been through the maelstrom of things as you have. But it pleases me that you have come to understand the glory of Arkio’s blessing.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rafen kept his voice neutral. Delos did not seem to notice.

  ‘That you took his oath, that gladdens me, Brother Rafen. I was afraid you might also succumb to the red thirst as Koris did.’

  ‘Were there any men who refused?’ Rafen said suddenly. ‘Did any battle-brother refuse to bend his knee to Arkio?’

  Delos looked at Rafen with a confused smirk. ‘Of course not. Not a single Blood Angel could deny his Ascension.’

  ‘No,’ said Rafen, ‘of course not.’

  The Chaplain stepped forward and opened the doors to the consecration chamber and beckoned him inside. It was gloomy in the room, the light of hovering biolumes casting a viridian haze over everything. A spider of metallic arms moved in the shadows and a Techmarine emerged.
/>   ‘Brother Lucion,’ said Rafen.

  Lucion gave him a nod of acknowledgement and gestured to a low iron bench. Across the surface were the parts of a suit of Adeptus Astartes power armour, and around the table a trio of hunched servitors twitched, awaiting the Techmarine’s command.

  ‘We shall commence,’ intoned Delos.

  Without ceremony, Rafen disrobed, discarding his common cloth and sandals, revealing the glistening ebony sheath of his black carapace. A living compound of plastics and alloys, the dark material had been implanted under the skin of his upper torso in his seventeenth year, as the final part of his initiation and transformation from Baalite tribesman into Blood Angels Space Marine. The neural sensors and transfusion shunts that bloomed from the surface of the carapace opened like the yawning mouths of tiny birds, ready to accept the interface jacks of his new armour.

  As Delos began the Litany of Armament, he set a grail-shaped censer swinging from his hands. Lucion gave a burst-command in chattering machine code, and as one the servitors went to work, fitting the components of the Mark VII codex power armour to Rafen’s body. The Space Marine joined in the chant where his answers were needed to complete the rite. Thermonic garments slid across him; flexible myomer muscle encircled the meat of his limbs, arranging itself to enhance and augment his physical strength; over this came the outer layer of bonded ceramite and plasteel weave, tough enough to turn a glancing bolt shell at twenty paces. Rafen slid his bare feet into the hollows of his greaves, the gyroscopic stabilisers in the broad boots humming into life.

  As the armour wrapped itself around him, the Blood Angel felt a measure of comfort from the familiar touch and scent of the wargear. The power armour he had worn since his initiation had been destroyed in combat with the Chaos champion Iskavan, the centuries-old hardware ruined by the claws and blades of the Word Bearer. Perhaps some elements of his old gear might remain among the components he now donned, but for the most part he was clothing himself in the armour of dead men. On the inner surfaces of the boots, the wrist sheaths, the chest plates, there were lines and lines of tiny scripture, etched there by blade-point over hundreds of years. Each piece of the codex armour carried the history of its wearers, a roll of honour naming the men that had borne it into countless battles. The gear that Rafen would now call his own had been in service to the Chapter for half a millennium or more.

  One of the servitors handed him a gauntlet, and Rafen paused. Etched in the ceramite about the wrist guard was a name that he knew. ‘Bennek,’ he said softly.

  ‘Brother?’ Lucion gave him a questioning look. ‘Is something amiss?’

  Rafen shook his head, remembering Bennek’s death on Cybele. His comrade had been struck by enemy plasma fire and crushed beneath a horde of Word Bearers. Rafen thrust his hand into the gauntlet and made a fist with it, silently vowing to avenge his battle-brother’s death.

  Lucion leaned in and attached Rafen’s left shoulder guard, running his claw-hand over the winged tear of blood embossed on the surface. The Techmarine gripped the opposing piece and moved to place it over the right arm, but Rafen’s eyes narrowed and he blocked Lucion with the flat of his hand. He pointed at the other shoulder guard. ‘What is this?’ Along with the traditional white teardrop design that symbolised the Third Company of the Blood Angels, the armour bore a new sigil – a golden spear surrounded by a halo.

  The Chaplain and Techmarine exchanged glances. ‘In honour of Arkio, brother,’ said Delos. ‘To signify our presence here as witnesses to his Emergence.’

  Rafen hesitated, thinking of his oath, then looked away with a nod. Lucion attached the pad without comment. Finally, the litany concluded with the Chaplain’s benediction over Rafen’s helmet. The Space Marine allowed the servitors to place it over his head, and he heard the hiss and click of the neck ring sealing him into the wargear. Inside the accustomed confines of the armour he felt alive again, the second skin of metal and plastic as natural to him as breathing. Rafen dropped to one knee and made the sign of the aquila.

  ‘I am armoured by the Emperor himself,’ he said, recalling the words of Dante from the eve of the Alchonis Campaign. ‘Righteousness is my shield. Faith is my armour and hatred my weapon. I fear not and I am proud, for I am a Son of Sanguinius, a protector of mankind. Aye, I am indeed an Angel of Death.’

  ‘Blood for Sanguinius,’ Lucion and Delos spoke together. ‘Blood for the Emperor. Blood for Arkio, the Angel Reborn.’

  Beneath the blank mask of his helmet’s breather grille, Rafen’s face soured at the last words, and he came to his feet. Lucion presented him with an object wrapped in red velvet. The Space Marine unfurled the cloth from his bolter and ran his fingers over the gun’s surface. This was the only piece of his equipment that had survived the clash with Iskavan intact, and Rafen felt a curious sadness as he read the engravings he had placed on it during his years of service. The bolter was a remnant of the old Rafen, he realised, the Blood Angel who had been content in his service to Chapter and God-Emperor, never daring to question his place in the scheme of things; not so now. He worked the slide on the weapon and loaded it, the last action in the ritual completed. Rafen brought the bolter to a battle-ready stance with a snap of boots on stone.

  A voice came from the doorway. ‘Ah, my brother is whole once more.’ Delos and Lucion bowed as Arkio strode into the chamber. Even in the poor light of the room, the Blood Angel’s golden armour seemed to glow with an inner luminescence.

  ‘Blessed,’ began the Chaplain, but Arkio waved him into silence.

  ‘Delos, if you would permit me, I would speak with my sibling alone.’

  ‘Of course.’ The priest gestured to Lucion and the two Space Marines took their leave, the tech-servitors waddling out after them.

  Arkio placed a hand on Rafen’s shoulder and smiled. ‘I promised you that you would live, did I not?’

  Rafen recalled his brother’s words in the wake of the duel with Iskavan. ‘Yes. I thank you for my life.’

  The smile broadened, and once again Rafen was struck by the uncanny similarities between Arkio’s new aspect and the renditions of Sanguinius that hung in the chapels. ‘Formality is not needed between us, Rafen. You are my blood kin as well as my battle-brother.’ He tapped the sculpted breastplate of his armour. ‘I want you close by my side. We have great works ahead of us, kinsman, high deeds that will be spoken of throughout the galaxy.’

  The display inside Rafen’s helmet told him the comparative positions of the nearest Blood Angels. There were four honour guards outside the chamber, along with Delos and Lucion; even the swiftest of them was a full ten seconds away. Arkio stood within arm’s length of Rafen, his mood relaxed and his guard apparently lowered. His brother was without headgear, the bare skin of his throat visible. Rafen was aware of the weight of his bolter in his mailed fist, a full magazine of shells there in the clip. It would not take much; just a jerk of the wrist to bring the muzzle of the gun to press against Arkio’s chest, one squeeze of the trigger to discharge a point-blank burst of fire. Even the hallowed gold artificer armour would not be able to withstand such a strike. In that moment, Rafen imagined the look of shock and pain on Arkio’s face as the bolt shells tore into his torso, punching his organs through his back in a riot of fluid and matter. He could almost smell the hot blood, the taste of it on his tongue flaring as the red thirst caressed the edges of his mind. The opportunity was here, now. All Rafen need do was raise his weapon and murder his brother, and he would put an end to all question of this Emergence. The thought of it repelled and agitated him in equal measure.

  ‘What… what deeds?’ The words came out of his mouth of their own accord.

  ‘A Blood Crusade,’ Arkio said firmly. ‘Once I have united the Chapter under our banner, we will draw together all the successors, all the Sons of Sanguinius. By the grail, we shall cut the cancerous heart of Chaos from our space.’ He gave his sibling a clear-eyed look, the pure power of his disposition overwhelming at such close quarters. It was lit
tle wonder that lesser men would die for one such as he.

  Rafen’s bolter felt like it was as dense as neutronium, too heavy to move. ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll begin with the Maelstrom, brother. Fitting that our first target will be the nest of the Word Bearers, yes? I will personally see to it that their foul cadre is purged to a man.’ Like the monstrous Eye of Terror, the horrific realm of warped space known as the Maelstrom was a gateway into the chaotic realm of the Ruinous Powers, and it was in this twisted zone that the Sons of Lorgar had made their throneworld. Arkio nodded to himself. ‘Commander Dante has allowed them the privilege of life too long, I think. As Sachiel said, it is not enough that we drove them from Cybele and Shenlong. We must drive them from existence.’

  ‘The priest,’ Rafen said in a chill voice. ‘You value his words more than those of our Chapter’s lord?’

  Arkio’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dante is not here, Rafen. Dante did not see, as we did, the merciless intent of Iskavan’s hordes. Had we not intervened, a world would have been put to death.’ He looked away. ‘I have always honoured Commander Dante in word and deed, but now I find my perspective changing, brother. During my time on the mission of the Bellus, away from Baal, perhaps it was then that I first began to wonder if his stewardship of our Legion was all it could be…’

  Rafen stifled a gasp. ‘Some would call that dissidence.’

  ‘Who?’ snapped Arkio, ‘Who would dare say that to me? Was it not our old mentor Koris who said that men must question all that they believe, or else they are fools?’

  ‘And what did it bring him?’ Rafen said bitterly. ‘Lord Dante is a fine commander.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Perhaps he was, five hundred years ago at the peak of his powers, but what of now? It was the inquisitor who drew me to this fact, Rafen – among all their victories, have the Blood Angels truly assumed their place as the first among equals before the Emperor? Look back to the death of our Brother Tycho at Hive Tempestora. One of our greatest falls and nothing is done? We should have led a reprisal force to wipe out a dozen ork tribeworlds as payment in kind. And Dante did not!’ He turned away, presenting his folded wings to his brother. ‘In eleven hundred years at the head of the greatest Chapter of the Legion Astartes, what progress has he made toward the mastery of our gene-curse? None!’