Deus Sanguinius

by James Swallow

  ‘You are the one they call the Blessed Arkio.’ It was not a question. ‘You claim that you are the vessel for the Angelic Sovereign.’

  ‘I claim nothing,’ Arkio said. ‘I simply am.’

  For the first time, their eyes met, and from within the dark pits of Mephiston’s soul, he turned his transfixing glare upon the youth; the sheer force of the mental charge between them set other men staggering upon their feet.

  ‘We shall see,’ intoned the Lord of Death, turning his baleful sight on Arkio’s very soul.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Darkness coiled from the evening sky and crossed the horizon with deep, inky shadows. Some of the Warriors of the Reborn shifted nervously and muttered, weapons rattling as they gripped them harder, afraid of what was to come next. Rafen moved forward through the ranks of men, better to observe the confrontation between Arkio’s and Mephiston’s titanic wills. He tasted the thick, greasy texture on the chill air, the same oily aroma that he had encountered before when Stele had brought his psychic powers to bear – but this time the magnitude was a hundred times greater, and the thickness of the atmosphere about him made Rafen feel like he was wading through a marshy bog. He could see the hellfire glow from beneath the Lord of Death’s brow, his eyes twin embers of controlled menace like distant beacons.

  The stink of mind-magick was all about him, and Rafen felt bile rise in his gorge. To be so near to such a naked show of psyker force made him feel soiled and unclean.

  He was closer now; he could see Stele’s bald head, the glint of the silver purity stud in his ear. The inquisitor appeared to be in distress, as if the effort of standing in Mephiston’s aura was almost too much for him. At his side, Stele’s woman trembled beneath her hood. Rafen swore he could see thin wisps of smoke issuing from her nostrils. The Space Marine kneaded the grip of the bolt pistol and forced himself to move nearer still.

  The Gaze was a lens that opened up the hidden world to Mephiston’s perception. The power burning inside him shone through the gates of his vision like the beam of a devout searchlight, pinning the weak and the unhallowed as it fell upon them. His sight-beyond-sight stripped away the illusions of reality and bared souls so that the Lord of Death could examine their pale, naked truths. He saw Arkio as if he were an anatomical sketch drawn from some textbook of the magus biologis, layers of skin, bone, muscle and nerve visible to him. The boy was glass, and Mephiston’s gaze shone into him, illuminating every corner of his spirit as searing sunlight falling through a prism.

  There. It was concealed well, buried beneath levels of wards and mind-baffles, the matter of it worked into the bone and meat of the Space Marine’s body, but the taint could not hide from the unblinking eye of Mephiston’s powers. The black ellipse floated among the perfection of Arkio’s Astartes physiology, ruining the sacred organic design of the Blood Angel. The seed of Chaos glittered and pulsed.

  In a faint way, he was slightly disappointed. Perhaps there was a part of him, however tiny, that had hoped Arkio’s story might be true; but instead Mephiston found himself confronted by a dupe, a mutant ignorant of his own poisoned nature. Other men might have felt pity then; but not he.

  The Lord of Death marvelled at the perfection and ingenuity of the taint – it was truly a work of psionic art, the construct of a maker both genius and madman. It bore the unmistakable fingerprints of the Changer of Ways across every aspect of its form. He traced thin thought-filaments from the infection, tracking the lines of their mutations, the reordering of fleshy matter that had altered the boy from a Marine to the simulacra he was now. Faint glints of contact danced in Arkio’s aura, bending like flowers seeking the sun, all of them turning toward one man.

  Stele. Mephiston could smell his emotions like spilled blood, a cocktail of arrogance warring with controlled fear, desire and avarice raging beneath the thin veneer of his icy civility. But the inquisitor was not the puppet master here; like a mirror within a mirror, Stele in turn was being directed by some other intelligence. He let his vision slip over the woman. She was like oil on water, repelling it instantly. Mephiston’s sight could not hold purchase on her.

  ‘Tell me, lord,’ said Arkio. ‘Now you have looked into my soul, what do you see?’ The tension in the square came to a knife-edge on his words. ‘Will you deny the work of the Great Angel upon me? Or will you accept that I am the incarnation of the Deus Sanguinius?’

  Mephiston drew back with a grim sneer on his lips. ‘If only your divinity matched the scope of your arrogance, lad, you might be what you appear.’

  ‘How dare you!’ blurted Sachiel, stepping forward. ‘He is the Reborn Angel, the light of–’

  ‘Silence, priest.’ The psyker stilled him with a single glance, and Sachiel clasped at his throat, coughing.

  The gracious expression on Arkio’s face faded into a blank mask of neutrality. ‘Mephiston, tread carefully. I offer you the chance to join my Blood Crusade. Do not be so quick to judge me. Come to my side, and I will welcome you as my battle-brother.’

  He arched an eyebrow, gauging the moment. ‘And if I do not?’

  ‘It would go poorly for you, Lord of Death. The sands of your life have already run thin on borrowed time. If you test them again, you will not be so blessed as you were on Armageddon.’

  A soft laugh escaped the psyker’s lips; he decided to allow the boy to talk. ‘Your presumption amuses me, Arkio. Tell me, this “crusade” of yours, what gives you the right to dictate such a thing? You speak as if it is your voice that leads our Chapter.’

  ‘And so it will be,’ Arkio replied. ‘Your master Dante has lingered too long in command of the Blood Angels. He will step aside for me.’

  The cold humour vanished from Mephiston’s face in an instant. ‘He will do no such thing for a pretender whelp like you.’ The Librarian’s voice was iron-hard and full of threat.

  Arkio watched him carefully. ‘Perhaps not. If he cannot release his petty fear of me then we will absolve him of his office. With all the due effort that may be required to do so.’ The golden-armoured figure summoned a trio of Sachiel’s honour guards and the men arrived with a titanium cylinder between them. Arkio opened the case and let the radiance of the Holy Lance light the darkening landscape. With a single swift motion, Arkio drew the ancient weapon and swept it up in a brilliant arc of light.

  ‘The… the Spear of Telesto…’ The words fell from the lips of the Techmarine in a humbled gasp.

  Arkio pointed the spear at Mephiston, sighting down the length of the haft at him. ‘I swear this by the blood of the primarch in my veins. Know me, Librarian. I am the Blood Angels incarnate. I am Sanguinius Reborn.’ Gold lightning arced around the teardrop blade at the tip of the spear. ‘Give me your fealty or perish. The choice is yours.’

  For one dizzying, horrible moment, Mephiston felt his world lurch around him as the lance hove into view. How can this be? He wields the sacred weapon! A storm of chattering doubts engulfed the Lord of Death; it was impossible to think that some debased impostor would ever be able to lay hands on the spear, and yet Arkio held the Holy Lance like he was born to it. Have I been mistaken? Could he really be the Reborn Angel? Who else could know the might of the Telesto artefact? Mephiston shook the churn of thought away with a shake of his head, tiny darts of blue fire crackling along his crystalline psi-hood. ‘No,’ he growled. There was some magick at work here, a bewitchery so subtle and insidious that even a weapon forged by Holy Terra could be deceived by it. ‘I am not cozened, pretender. Your parlour tricks mean nothing against my faith.’ The Blood Angel’s hand dropped to the hilt of his arcane force sword, the ancient mind-blade Vitarus. ‘No true Son of Sanguinius will ever bend his knee to you, charlatan. You are false.’

  A surge of anger thundered through the Warriors of the Reborn and cries of violence burst forth from Arkio’s loyalists. Rafen let them jostle him forward.

  Arkio shook his head in annoyance. ‘Poor, old fool. You are infected with Dante’s fear, just as Vode and Gallio before you
, just as every misguided man who sits under Baal’s sun and believes himself a true Blood Angel. I am the way.’ He shouted, brandishing the spear, ‘I am the truth reborn. Your blindness sickens me, mind-witch. I pity you.’

  Mephiston’s troops knotted together, breeches clattering on their bolters in a rush of noise. The Librarian drew himself to his full height, towering over Arkio’s golden form and brilliant white wings. ‘Save it for yourself, fool. You and your ordos accomplice, all of you are black with the stain of Chaos! It reeks from you…’ He stabbed a copper-gloved finger at the inquisitor, who met his accusation with a sneer. ‘This weakling is a lackey of the Ruinous Powers, and those who heed his words are equally disgraced with the stigma of heresy!’ The psyker’s words drew a chorus of denials and vicious retorts. ‘Ramius Stele, I name you traitor. You conspire with dark powers and revel in corruption. You are the architect of this apostasy!’

  ‘No!’ roared the inquisitor, the shout slamming into the distant ruins like a thunderclap. ‘The Blessed is right. You decry all that you fear! Your words are lies, Mephiston, lies. Arkio is Sanguinius.’

  ‘Then he shall prove it,’ the Lord of Death spat back. ‘In the Book of the Lords, the Pure One was said to be the match of any warrior that lived. If this is so, then perhaps your so-called “Blessed” would be willing to face a true Blood Angel in single combat…’ Mephiston bared his fangs. ‘If he is the vessel for the will of the Angelic Sovereign, he will be victorious. If he is a mere pretender, he will die.’

  He watched the consequence of his dare as it spread out among Arkio’s loyalists, sensing the merge of anger and fear it engendered. He nodded to himself; exactly the reaction he had wanted. Playing the young fool into his hands, Mephiston had brought him to this moment, and now he would butcher the impostor like a prey beast. Such a brutal and very visible destruction of this golden figurehead was necessary – when Arkio died on the tip of Mephiston’s force sword, his disciples and helots would break. Their confusion would make it easier for the Lord of Death to execute them. This insurrection had to be smashed in the most public and bloody way possible.

  Men on both sides began to draw back, granting room for the coming duel, and Sachiel had found his voice once more. ‘It’s a trick,’ he sputtered, the veins on his neck corded and tight with anger bordering on madness. ‘You cannot accept, Blessed. The psyker is goading you.’

  Arkio gave the priest a brief, beneficent smile. ‘Sachiel, my friend. Your concern for my wellbeing is touching, but misplaced. I will not dismiss this challenge. If Mephiston wishes to see the might of the Red Angel enraged, then by the grail, I shall show it to him!’ He stepped forward in a grim-faced swagger, the Holy Lance at rest beneath the curl of his wing. ‘I will face any man here,’ Arkio told the Librarian, ‘and I will send him to the Emperor’s grace knowing the truth of my divinity!’ He made a show of opening his arms wide to the assembled men, Blood Angels, loyalists, slave-soldiers alike. ‘Who here would take up arms to fight me? Which of you will shed your blood to prove the rightness of my decree?’

  The sword Vitarus whispered as it drew free of its scabbard. ‘Arkio,’ growled Mephiston. ‘It will be my–’

  ‘I will face him!’ The cry cut through the air and set heads turning, hands frozen on weapons.

  ‘Who?’ said the sergeant at Mephiston’s flank. ‘It came from over there.’ The veteran indicated the mob of Arkio’s men with the barrel of his bolter.

  The psyker’s perplexity increased as the crowd of ragged slave-troops parted to allow a single Blood Angel to come forward. His armour was discoloured by bloodstains and there was a gouge in his chest plate. As Mephiston watched, the Space Marine stepped past Arkio’s retinue and removed his helmet. For the first time, he saw an expression on the pretender’s face that wasn’t anger or arrogance, but pure, raw shock.

  ‘Rafen!’ Arkio choked out the name. ‘You survived…’

  ‘Impossible,’ Sachiel shrieked, grabbing at his gun. ‘The factory was obliterated, he was inside, he could not have–’

  ‘Quiet, you fool,’ growled Stele, forcing the priest to lower his weapon. ‘It appears that your news of his death was premature.’

  Rafen and Arkio held each other’s gaze for a long moment. ‘Brother,’ said the figure in gold, ‘I did not think to lay eyes on you again.’

  ‘I am a survivor,’ Rafen replied, the weariness of all that had happened before in his voice, ‘and now it has come to this.’

  ‘You tried to destroy me, Rafen. You turned your back on me.’ Arkio’s words were thick with emotion, pain and fury.

  He shook his head. ‘I have not betrayed you, kindred. You have betrayed yourself. I warned you. I begged you to step back from the abyss.’ Rafen looked away. ‘You did not heed me.’

  ‘And now it has come to this,’ Arkio repeated. ‘Very well, brother. If a son of Axan must die today, then die he will.’

  The Lord of Death slammed his force weapon back into its sheath and beckoned Rafen closer. ‘Come to me, brother. If you wish this, then let me know you.’

  Rafen knelt before Mephiston and raised his head. ‘Aye, I wish it.’ The light behind the psyker’s eyes glowed and burnt a path into Rafen’s mind. He felt his body tense and Mephiston’s hand shot out, cupping his chin so he could not turn away.

  The Librarian’s powerful inner sight tore apart any defence of will that Rafen might have thought he had, slipping into the corridors of his psyche in a flood of power. His brain felt like hot magma, churning and boiling as storms of long-forgotten memory were dredged up and examined. Nothing that was Rafen escaped the gaze of Mephiston.

  For a brief moment, their mentalities were unified as the Lord of Death sifted through the Space Marine’s consciousness. Mephiston tasted Rafen’s heart, the colours and shades of his soul – he saw pieces of the man that even Rafen himself could not comprehend. Duty and honour marbled his spirit, they were cut into Rafen like the age rings of a nyawood tree. Once, there had been a time when this man was wilful and arrogant, when it was only his own glory that had occupied his mind; that Rafen was gone, a child grown into an adult with all the knowledge of life’s hardest lessons. The Space Marine embodied the ideal of the Blood Angels. He was noble but humble, a warrior but not belligerent. Among all these brothers who have lost their way, this one alone still walks the path of the Blood. There can be no better champion.

  Mephiston sensed something else, remaining only in fragments and splinters throughout Rafen’s spirit. The touch of something higher, the marks where a force of being with powers far beyond the Lord of Death’s had briefly influenced Rafen.

  A vision…

  The Librarian released him and withdrew, the fire in his eyes retreating. An unspoken moment of communication passed between the two men, a sadness at what Rafen had foreseen and what he knew had to be done. ‘He is your blood kin,’ said Mephiston.

  ‘Aye, lord.’

  He nodded. ‘Rafen, you are true to our code. I stand aside to let you take my place in this challenge.’ Mephiston gestured to the veteran nearby. ‘Sergeant, give this man your power sword.’

  The Space Marine drew the weapon and presented it to Rafen, who accepted it with a shallow bow. He turned the blade over in his hands, his fingers falling easily behind the spiked guard and into the knurled grip. The sword resonated with dormant threat, the polished silver blade catching the colour of the orange sky in its surface. Rafen traced the shape of a half-eagle cut into the hilt. ‘A fine weapon,’ he noted.

  Mephiston stepped back to give him room. ‘This matter will be decided,’ he intoned. ‘Brother against brother, with victory for the faithful.’

  Perfect.

  Stele almost laughed out loud when Rafen took up the sword. This was ideal, he could have done no better himself at producing so exquisite a finale. Brother facing brother, with death alone the reward for Rafen’s foolhardy presumption. Such a conflict would be a fitting end for that turbulent Space Marine, and at long last Stele
would be rid of the irritant that had plagued him since they had first arrived among Cybele’s war graves. It was regretful that Arkio’s brother had proven so resistant to the cult that Stele had created among the Blood Angels – such a warrior with so defiant and unyielding a soul would have made a fine addition to the Reborn Angel’s retinue. If only he had followed the route of his battle-brothers and truly accepted Arkio’s new-found divinity, Rafen would be here now as a lord commander among the forces of the Blood Crusade; instead, he would be its first victim, and his vitae would be the wine of its consecration.

  But no, Stele told himself, better that he dies. While he lived, Rafen was random chance, a wild card among the inquisitor’s games of engineered plot and counterplot. It had been pure fluke that the Space Marine had been on Cybele when Garand sent the Word Bearers to attack it, but his presence had quickly grown from a minor diversion to the most serious nuisance. Rafen would never truly give his heart to his changed sibling – Stele had known that even when Arkio took his oath in the Ikari fortress’s chapel – and so he had to be destroyed.

  Rafen would die at his brother’s own hand, and with that Arkio would be inexorably committed to a path from the Emperor’s light for all time. Once the blood of his closest kinsman spattered that golden armour, once it hissed into steam from the burning blade of the Holy Lance, Arkio would have severed the last connection that still made him human. Once Rafen perished, Arkio would move ever further toward the eightfold way with nothing to hold him back. He would murder his conscience along with his brother.

  Stele sensed Mephiston’s attention upon him, and saw the Librarian from the corner of his sight, unwilling to meet his gaze directly. Perhaps the psyker sensed some measure of his thoughts, perhaps not. It mattered little, he would wait for the moment when the light died in Rafen’s eyes, and then let loose a call for carnage. With Ulan’s smothering mind-cloak to protect them, the loyalists would be upon the Lord of Death and his men in numbers so large that none of Dante’s Space Marines would survive.