by Various
If that made our task easier, though, then I could live with that. I did not think it could be serious.
We were dropped into position one hour before the scheduled combined assault. I took the right flank, Hakeem the left. We were a long way from the Luna Wolves’ positions, and planned to skirt wide of their intended advance to draw as much fire from the centre as possible.
We were wary of the enemy gunnery – it was precise – but we were also confident in our speed, our bike-mastery. I wished to show Moy what we could do. I wanted the city to be in flames and confusion.
Moy gave the order, and we accelerated, falling into a wide approach pattern. From two kilometres out we started picking up incoming fire. It intensified, and we dragged back in, weaving between the energy beams. I was enjoying it. We took some losses, but they were clearly struggling to target us. We reached the walls ahead of schedule, boosting the jetbikes high to clear the outer parapets.
The defenders fell back, hit on all sides by our incoming lances, giving us room to deploy heavy charges. They were wall-breachers, enough to gouge holes into the perimeter and allow ingress to the advancing infantry. We blew them just as the enemy began to regroup and bring up their heavier weapon pods. Whole sections of barricade crumbled, opening up the city beyond.
I voxed Hakeem, preparing to fall back as we had planned. Our task was complete, and we were now to stage a mock retreat, pulling defenders out from what remained of their defensive perimeter in time to meet the oncoming Luna Wolves.
‘Now we stay, khan,’ Hakeem said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. I could hear over the comm that his position was already being shelled. Soon, mine would be too.
‘These are Horus’ sons. They will not respect a fall-back. We hold, though, and our pact will be sealed.’
I don’t know why he chose that moment to spring the new plan on me. Perhaps he judged that under fire I would be more likely to make the snap decision he needed. In any case, as soon as he spoke I saw the attraction of it. I was tired of the endless withdrawals, the strafing and the shams. We were like ghosts, never planting our feet long enough to make a stand. Other Legions were proud of their steadfastness under fire – why could we not be the same?
My warriors were looking to me for orders. Already the volume of fire was picking up, and soon it would become ruinous. I checked the augurs, noting Hakeem’s position, the Luna Wolves’ ingress routes, the timings and the dispositions...
Then I made up my mind.
‘Dismount and hold,’ I ordered, pulling my bolter from its holster. ‘We will blood them here.’
We took more losses. I am not proud of those. We were armed and equipped for fast raiding, not for holding beachheads against heavily armoured enemies, and we lacked the ranged support we needed.
But I am proud of this: we were not dislodged.
By the time Moy’s troops caught up, we were dug in deep, preventing the Tarschi squads from linking up amidst the ruined walls. The Luna Wolves marched past us, hitting the flanks of encircling enemy units and shattering them. Then we pushed on, united, burning into the city beyond. Some of us remounted, using the bikes to combine with Moy’s infantry. I stayed on my feet, and soon my battle-brothers were ranged in both white and copper-green.
It was a potent mixture. I watched the way they fought. I admired it and sought to emulate it. It is my belief that they did the same. We had become a merged force, and the blood of the enemy was bright upon our twin blades.
I was fighting in the very centre of the city when Moy reached me, his armour spattered and his chainblade glistening.
‘That was not what we planned,’ he shouted, though there was no anger in it, just surprise.
‘Would you have pulled back?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘I would not have known how.’
After that we reduced the whole place to ashes. They tell me that the wreckage burned for weeks.
We did not return to the ships that night. Our warriors remained out on the surface, celebrating the victory. There was a rapport there – we were Legions of rawness, and killing together had shown how similar our natures were.
Hakeem returned just after sunset, his armour bearing heavy damage. He was grinning.
‘This was a good night, khan,’ he said.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked.
‘Learning new things,’ he said. ‘Will you follow? Moy is waiting.’
And I did follow. I had no reason not to. My battle-spirits were still coursing. I was as euphoric as the rest of my brotherhood. Few victories have ever tasted better to me than that night, for we had cast down expectations as well as the walls.
Moy was waiting outside the entrance to a canvas tent. Guards of his Legion were posted all around it, and torches burned within. I could see the shadows of those moving inside, and hear the sounds of raised voices.
‘This was good hunting,’ said Moy. There was a vivid light in his eyes, which I took to be the joy of the clean kill. ‘It will not be the last we share.’
I was pleased to hear it. ‘So what is this, captain?’ I asked.
‘A gathering of warriors. It is something we do in the Legion. Will you join us?’
Did I feel any reason not to? I do not remember clearly. I do not think so. It seemed… courteous. Hakeem was evidently already familiar with what was going on and went ahead of me, ducking under the tent flaps.
I could hear the chants from my brothers, victory-songs in both Terran Gothic and Chogorian Khorchin. I hesitated on the threshold, looking back at Moy.
‘A custom of your home world?’ I asked.
‘Not of Cthonia. And it has become more than a mere custom now.’
His earlier belligerence was gone. I felt that my attempts at diplomacy had been successful, and that this was the start of something new for the Legion – something that would see us become less... isolated. I felt as if I had achieved this, alongside the military victory, and it made me proud.
So I went inside.
> Here is the supposition: you had always wished to be a part of the other Legion.
I told you, no. Others joined. In the beginning, it felt natural.
> And afterwards?
Until the end, I believed it to be in the cause of justice.
> And Hakeem?
We shared the same views, though he was always further down the path than I.
> Where is he now?
I have already told you. I do not know. Either he died at Prospero, or he is gone.
> But you have a belief.
[pause]
I do not believe he was killed. He will not have recanted. He will attempt to restore things, somehow, to turn them back to the vision he was shown.
> You were weak in this. You were his khan.
I have many errors to regret. Hakeem is not the greatest of them.
> We will come to those. But what of you?
I have told you everything.
> Not yet.
What more do you wish to know? If I would enter the tent, given my time again? If I would return to my brotherhood? If I would right the wrong?
> The Khagan will rule.
I would enter it again. Of course I would.
> Be wary. You may yet damn yourself.
I will not grovel! I am Torghun Khan, of the Brotherhood of the Moon, and the ordu of Jemulan Noyan-Khan. In all these things, I took the path of honour. I believed in the Great Crusade. I believed in the Warmaster when all others believed in him. These things will not be erased. Now pronounce sentence, or give me a blade to wield. I can still serve. I can still fight.
[pause]
Then what will it be?
[pause]
What will it be? Tell me!
[pause]
I will know my fate.
Inheritor
Gav Thorpe
The Abyssal Situlate would come. Orisons of pain would call him. Lamentable prayers would build the bridge. The ecstasy of faith would open the gate. As he had been instructed, so Torquill Eliphas would obey. As had been laid down in the Architectus Paternus, so the Word Bearer would act.
‘Soon,’ he told his companions. ‘Soon the consecration will be upon us and our labours fulfilled. Glories undreamed-of and rewards everlasting shall be ours.’
Clad in armour of dark red and gold – the drab plate of the old Legion obscured beneath layers of enamel just as the old rites had been replaced by new sacraments – Eliphas epitomised the grandeur and celebration of the reborn XVII Legion. The new lacquerwork blotted out his old hierarchical symbols, but in gold and rubies was picked out the icon of the Ark of Testimony Chapter.
He was Chapter Master no longer. Soon, he would be so much more.
He bore a large mace, as much a sceptre of office as a weapon. From the pierced head drifted clouds of crimson incense whose sweet scent left a bitter aftertaste. Its specific compound had been developed to induce a slightly stimulated state, even in the adapted physiology of a Space Marine. Near-constant exposure left Eliphas twitchy, his pupils dilated to the extent that his eyes appeared black. He was never still, his gaze always moving from one point to another, fingers flexing on the haft of the mace and fidgeting with the snakeskin-bound grip of the pistol holstered at his hip.
Eliphas’ roaming stare moved across the edifice he had raised, ignoring his two fellow Word Bearers as he spoke.
‘Now is the greatest moment of our lives. Now our service shall be renewed and our efforts redoubled that we might herald the Epoch of Changes. An empire laid waste, its ruins a dedication to the Abyssal Situlate. Five hundred worlds drowned in blood, scoured by fire, in revenge for fair Monarchia.’
‘It is not enough, Inheritor,’ growled Achton. Like his commander, Khyrior Achton wore the new livery of the Legion. On a long stave he bore an icon wrought from eight gilded skulls, set upon an octagon of silvered thigh bones. When he spoke, the vexillary’s deep voice was edged with bitterness. ‘A thousand worlds would not repair such hurt. The wound is in our souls where no salve can reach.’
The third warrior of the XVII wore the original grey of the Legion, the surface of his armour marked by scripture dedicated to the Emperor – now struck through in many tracts, the meanings of others amended by subtly ironic additions that turned entreaties into insults, benedictions into curses. Though outwardly the least changed of the trio, Gorvael Yoth was the most learned in the works of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron.
While it had been Eliphas’ energy and vision that had brought the Templum Daemonarchia into existence, it had been shaped by the knowledge and calculations of Yoth.
Eliphas said nothing as he admired the construction wrought by their slaves, rendered breathless by its magnitude and magnificence. If one looked closely there might have been a wet glimmer in his eye, though he would have claimed it was simply the reflection of Kronus’ sun.
The cathedral of impurity towered two hundred metres into the sky, built from the ruins of the flattened city of Typhaedes on the Deimos Peninsula. Though masonry and mortar formed its foundation – looted from court precincts and tithe yards, senatorial palaces and communal solisternia – the true beauty of the edifice was in the human materials bound within its construction. Their sacrifice to honour the Abyssal Situlate would remain forever, an immortal end for benighted mortals. Eliphas looked upon their physical remains and, for a moment, he almost envied them their eternal peace.
Some had been preserved intact, particularly the youngest, their skin like alabaster, their innocent faces raised to the sky with expressions of beatific torment. When he closed his eyes and pictured them, Eliphas could hear the screams of despairing adulation trapped within the transparent lacquer that coated each of the one thousand cherubic figures arrayed in a tightening spiral around the immense pilaster.
The chorus of their death-shrieks vibrated on the very edge of hearing, unheard by the mundane but projecting a clear signal that rippled out across the empyrean. It would carry Eliphas’ message to the Abyssal Situlate and the favour of the great master would fall like manna upon him.
The other nine thousand souls bound within the awe-inspiring monument of the templum had been rendered down to their essence, to the bones upon which weak flesh had been hung. Of these, three thousand were intact skeletons, arrayed artfully as a parade of the dead dancing and feasting as they marched into the heavens. The artistry belonged to Eliphas, but the precisely calculated angles of each body belonged to Gorvael Yoth. Between them they combined the science and aesthetic of the immaterial, that mystical yet attainable balance point between the everyday and the divine, the real and unreal, the mortal universe and the warp. The Golden Gate, it was called colloquially by the lower ranks – a crude euphemism but one that served its purpose. The Templum Daemonarchia would be like a gate once activated, and through it would arrive the Abyssal Situlate to lay down praises upon those that had built such a wonder.
Of the remaining cadavers, all but eight were no more than skulls used to pave the road before the macabre procession and to act as the sacred constellations in the sky above them on this arcane tableau.
The last handful adorned the Primordial Sun of Achton’s standard, which would be set upon the monument at the required moment, a lightning rod for all the powers of the Daemonarchia.
Thus would the bridge be built and the path laid.
The entire tower throbbed with latent energy, silently singing with the souls of the blessed deceased. Eliphas could only imagine what it would feel like when the templum was empowered.
With each passing moment he admired anew the wonderfully grotesque lines and confluences of the strangely angled edifice. In places it seemed to bare teeth made of ribs, in others it was as flat and smooth as the gulf between stars, the dark marble seeming to swallow his gaze. Elliptical spirals and geometric concatenations drew the eye in strange directions, making even Eliphas’ head spin, despite his artificially augmented sense of balance. The rapidly narrowing point of the tower, the forced perspective against the overcast sky, drew one up into the heavens with vertiginous swiftness.
And it was still not complete. A scaffold of wooden towers and decks linked by rope ladders jutted impossibly from the narrow but soaring building. Pulleys and tackles hung like spider’s webs, used to move the immense blocks of basalt and granite, sandstone and marble from the base of the tower to their final positions.
Shaped by a team of seventy-three masons – many of whom had been only too willing to work to Yoth’s plans to build the tower rather than become part of it – each block had been stained pale red, anointed with blood from the sacrificed. They were fixed in place with mortar mixed from the same and liberally thickened with bone powder. Thousands laboured at the winches to manoeuvre the great slabs and bricks into place. They worked without harness or rope – more than a hundred had fallen to their deaths in the last two days, and a similar number had been crushed against the growing walls by swaying blocks, or bludgeoned by snapping scaffold.
All in all, a hundred thousand souls of Kronus had given up their tedious mortal existence for the greater glory of the Abyssal Situlate.
The last of the foursome viewing this majestic enterprise was Vostigar Catacult Eres. He was a little shorter than Eliphas, by just two or three centimetres, but was broader in shoulder and chest. His armour was layered with the polished sheen of gritty white ceramite, contrasting with his blue steel pauldrons and gauntlets. Upon his shoulder was wrought in brass a pair of jaws closing about a planet – the symbol of the XII Legion. If one did not know his allegiance from such colours and icons, it would have been made obvious by his half-shaved skull, the left side of which was studded with exposed metallic i
mplants. Mood-inhibitors and adrenal boosters, Eres and his brother World Eaters referred to them as ‘the Butcher’s Nails’ and seemed oddly proud of the fact that their brains had been tampered with. For Eliphas, such mechanical interference was a contravention of the bond between the corpus and the soul, but he was wise enough not to cause any insult to the temperamental captain.
Eres stood with arms crossed and looked at the templum. Two curved chainswords hung at his hips, and the right vambrace of his war-plate was mounted with a boltgun mechanism fed by a belt of ammunition linked to his modified backpack. The plates at his elbows and knees, as well as his boots, sported serrated blades specially angled to allow him to use his arms and legs as weapons in close fighting.
‘This is what you wanted all the bodies for?’ the World Eater asked. He turned his incredulous gaze on Eliphas. ‘It’s ugly. Why would you build such an abomination? What does it do?’
‘Do?’ Yoth sneered and turned on the World Eater before Eliphas could reply. ‘It channels. It absorbs. It magnifies. It contorts. It takes the energies of the other-realm and spirals them through a complex system of decantations and alphanumerical mysti-rhythms, until it creates a condensed immaterial formwork derived from quarto-potentials bonded to a semi-scaling decline rift. It is a construction of epic nature – those physical properties you deem ugly are mirrored by a conversely beautiful but invisible balance and poise of preternatural accuracy and function. One might just as well set eyes upon the opening blossom of a dawnrose and complain that the edges were a little ragged.’
Yoth turned breathlessly back to his creation and was clearly about to continue, but Eliphas intervened.
‘It is equally a beacon, a bridge and a gateway, kinsman,’ he said. He understood his companion’s frustration, but it served nobody’s purpose to antagonise their ally. Trying to explain to the purely military mind of Eres the aetheric interplays brought about by the unique construction of the templum was akin to describing the glory of a rainbow to a blind fish. He waved a hand in agitation as he struggled to find the words that would convey the multidimensional elegance of it. ‘It is… It is both the messenger and the message. The herald and the clarion. The slaver and the slave.’