Warhammer 40,000 - Anthology 13

by The Book of Blood (Christian Dunn)

  The smoke swirled into a dense column, gyring back and forth like a lazy tornado. Then it clicked. The black smoke, the bloody mouths, the tearing of flesh. Tenjin strained his eyes into the fire. The flames leapt and flickered crazily, they crackled and hissed, spitting sizzling shards of fat into the faces of the lunatic figures. There.

  The flames seemed to burn with an unusual red, tinted into orange by the reflection of the moon and the hunger of the fire.

  There was a hand. It had been licked clean of flesh by the flames, but it was a human hand. It reached out of the fire as though thrown out for help; the last desperate action of a drowning man. Other forms began to resolve themselves in the fire. Feet, arms, heads and legs. Tens of them, piled on top of each other and set alight. A gargantuan pile of burning flesh, sending pungent plumes of death into the night sky - a grotesque barbeque.

  ‘What are they doing, sir?’ Endo’s eyes were taught and perplexed. He was horrified and fascinated all at once.

  ‘Dancing, Endo. They are dancing.’ Tenjin turned to the scout and looked into his eyes. They were burning and tinged with red. ‘Just dancing,’ he said gently, narrowing his gaze.

  ‘What should we do, brother chaplain?’ Nagaboshi’s low voice broke Tenjin’s concentration. He turned to face the other scout and was shocked to see his eyes wild and blood riddled. ‘We must do something!’ Nagaboshi insisted, his voice being dragged from some almost inaudible depth.

  Tenjin paused for a moment, searching in the eyes of the scout, looking for something more or less than the urgency of blood. He could see nothing. Turning back to the grisly and gruesome party below them, he scanned the scene once more. The macabre dancers still twitched and wretched around the fire, the blood markings on their chests spelling out the sign of Khorne. The chaplain had to fight with himself to control his own Rage - he could feel it pulsing under his diaphragm, prodding him into rapid, shallow breathing. In his mind he whispered the Moripatris, drawing the thoughts deep into his lungs and letting them deepen his breathing back into normalcy.

  ‘You two, with me,’ he commanded in a powerfully whispered voice that permitted no resistance. The two scouts at his shoulders turned and followed Tenjin back to the waiting squad, snatching impatient glances back over their shoulders as they crept through the mountain darkness. At least they were following.

  From a receptacle protruding from the back of his bike, Tenjin withdrew a spherical package, wrapped carefully in a shimmering black cloth. He unfolded the velvety material with care, revealing the stylised, bespiked skull of his Death Mask. It glinted with depths of darkness in the moonlit, emanating new shades of black into the night. The mask hissed into place as Tenjin pulled it over his head, the latches securing themselves into his carapace with unerring precision. Tenjin’s face was gone and the scouts found themselves gazing into the face of death himself - inhuman eyes burning with purple intensity in the skeletal sockets.

  With the scouts of the Angels Sanguine arrayed before him, Death gripped his right fist to his chest, clasping the glowing Rosarius medallion tightly in his hand - the soul armour of a Space Marine chaplain, a reluctant gift from the Ecclesiarchy. In his left, the chaplain held forth the Crozius Arcanum, his staff of office. The wings of Sanguinius radiated from the Crozius, spilling fountains of red light from the droplet of his blood enshrined in its heart, bathing the scouts in an aura of purity. I can do no more than this, Tenjin worried inside himself, looking into the mixed expressions of awe and impatience before him as he invoked the ritual of Moripatris - the Mass of Doom.

  ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius! Death! Death comes for the deviants!’

  ‘DEATH COMES FOR THE DEVIANTS!’ enjoined the scout squad with a single voice.

  In an instant the scouts were back on their assault bikes, engines purring with impatient power. Tenjin was at the head of the column, riddled with anxiety about his novice team, torn between a deep-felt need to annihilate the deviants on the other side of this mountain and an equally deep concern that this side of the mountain hosted an infinitely more dangerous deviance. He pushed the thoughts aside - battle will reveal their souls.

  Raising the Crozius above his head he shouted, ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius!’ Tenjin’s bike roared into life, bursting over the crest of the path in a blaze of blood reds and blacks, gilded with gold. Behind him came his column of righteousness, each Marine leaving the ground as he cleared the pass, their bikes leaping the sharp descent in a single jump, before thudding and skidding into the dust in the midst of the repugnant camp. Head lamps blazed brighter than the flames of the cannibalistic fire and the staccato onslaught of bolter fire drowned out the drums of the dancers.

  The librarian gently pushed back his hood, revealing his unshadowed face to the high priest for the first time since his return. ‘Thank you,’ he said, accepting the glass of red liquid from the outstretched arm of Ansatsu.

  The two Marines knelt ceremonially, facing each other across a silent space, underspread with the ancient Shroud of Servius. There were no attendants and no surveillance servitors in this place - they were quite alone.

  Ansatsu watched intently as the librarian drank deeply from his glass. ‘It has been a long time since I have tasted the blood of Baalus Trine,’ conceded Ashok.

  ‘It is sweet, is it not?’

  ‘It does have a special quality, indeed.’

  ‘The Deathwatch must change a Marine - even a librarian,’ mused Ansatsu, as though to himself.

  ‘Yes, but change comes in many forms and from many places,’ replied Ashock with a faint smile, toying with the residue of his drink, swirling the blood into a whirlpool. He looked up, fixing Ansatsu’s eyes with his own, which seemed to glitter with an unfathomable blackness at their core. ‘Things are changing here too.’

  ‘Had you not left so soon after our adoption of this planet as our home - so soon after I was honoured with the position of high priest - you would understand the changes more completely. After Hegelian 9, I had great hopes for you.’

  Ashok nodded his head slightly, reaching out with his thoughts and testing the substance of Ansatsu’s words. ‘Yes, I can see that now. But the Deathwatch also had plans for me, and it was my honour to serve. For the Emperor and Sanguinius.’

  The cultists fell like animals, squealing and running in panic. No, not in panic, in pleasure, Tenjin reflected as he watched the appalling features of a bloody, crazed face dissolve under the impact of his power fist. It was an orgy and a blood bath all at once.

  For a few moments the scout squad maintained its formation - the column circling around the camp, herding the deviants into a tight pack and then loosing bolts into the dense group. Tenjin had pulled his bike over into the shadows on the outskirts of the camp, just beyond the flickering light cast by the fire, picking off stragglers and the particularly fleet of foot. His power fist hummed with life and dispensed instant death to all those who glimpsed his terrifying features.

  Not many had escaped the tactics of the squad and the chaplain soon slid his bike to a standstill and surveyed the scene. He was relieved to see the discipline of the rookie squad, their clinical workmanship as they whipped the cultists into a spiralling pen of execution. And he watched the cultists themselves, each bearing the mark of Khorne etched into their chests with blood, each perversely elated about their blood-drenched fate. They offered little resistance - this was not really a battle fit for Space Marines.

  As the relief settled into his thoughts, Tenjin began to notice more details. The cultists were deformed. Some had scales piercing the skin on their arms. Others had the suggestions of aborted limbs sprouting from their abdomens. Most were overly muscular yet stooped in stature, as though their muscles had outgrown their skeletons and pulled them back into themselves. Some seemed blind, just running into circles because of the momentum of the crowd.

  But it was not just the cultists. The prisoners chained at the edge of the camp were similarly mutated. Tenjin glanced back and for
th between the prisoners and the cultists - the only visible difference was the grotesque brand of Khorne on the chests of the cattle at the centre of the scouts’ ring of death.

  Suddenly the scout squad broke formation. First to go was Nagaboshi, who swerved his bike violently out of the column, skidding the back wheel in an arc and then gunning the engine. Nagaboshi roared forward into the heart of the cultists firing wildly with his bolter, riddling the cattle with shells, punching holes through bodies and the crowd. In an instant he was upon them, his bike scything through the bloody bodies, crushing bones and skulls under its weight until the shear mass of the crowd brought it to a halt. Then Nagaboshi was on his feet, spinning frantically in the heart of the cultists, loosing bolts in all directions. The shells from his bolter started to escape the rapidly thinning crowd, some punching into the armour of the encircling scouts, who rapidly broke formation.

  Endo leapt from his bike as a bolter shell smacked into the engine block, sending hissing jets of steam rising into the night. He cast his own bolter aside and pounced into the remains of the cultists, grabbing at figures with his bare hands, tearing limbs from bodies.

  The other scouts scattered throughout the rest of the camp on their bikes, cutting down any deviant that they could find. Tenjin watched in horror as a knot of bikers roared passed the manacled prisoners and gunned them down in a merciless drive-by.

  The chaplain kicked his bike back into life and held the Crozius aloft, urging energy into the staff and flooding the camp with the aura of Sanguinius. By the time he reached the centre of the camp, projecting a litany of control from his Death Mask, Endo had fought his way through the remnants of the cultists and was upon Nagaboshi in a flash. He smacked his fist into the back of his battle brother, shattering his spine and sending him sprawling forward into the sand.

  Tenjin slammed the shaft of the Crozius into the ground and a bright light burst from the blood of Sanguinius held in its core. The scouts lurched into motionlessness all over the camp, stunned by the flood of awe that rushed out over them. They strained against the invisible leashes, as though battling with constraints secured deeply within them. Endo rocked visibly and then fell to ground holding his head in agony.

  The chaplain stood majestically in the centre of the camp, emblazoned and radiant with the power of Sanguinius pulsing in his hands. There was blood everywhere, soaking into the sands and gathering into pools around the piles of corpses. Not a single tribesman was left standing. They were all dead. Cultist and prisoners alike. Including Nagaboshi, three scouts were also dead - although there was no way that the primitives of Khorne could have slain a Marine.

  ‘Explain yourself, chaplain.’ The high priest stood impassively before the altar in the Temple of Sanguinius. Behind him was a Marine that Tenjin felt he should recognise. He bore the insignia of the Deathwatch on one shoulder plate and held the ornate Force Staff of a librarian in his right hand. His face was hidden under the folds of his Psychic Hood.

  Tenjin was kneeling before them. ‘The tribesmen were followers of Khorne, my lord. They were also mutants. Purification was required.’ The chaplain knew that this was not the desired response.

  ‘Yes, but what of the villagers, the prisoners of the cultists?’

  ‘They too were mutants, my lord.’

  ‘But not cultists?’

  ‘No, my lord. They were sacrificial prisoners of the cultists.’

  ‘You are aware, brother chaplain, that all the tribes of Baalus Trine are at least slightly mutated, thanks to the radiation of this inhospitable world? We may be far from Baal Primus here, but it took the Angels Sanguine many centuries to find its first home world with conditions similar enough to that of the Blood Angels. Since then, we have passed through a long succession of planets over the millennia, but only this world has warranted the name of Baalus. We have settled here for a reason. Our gene-seed requires hosts with a genetic make-up compatible with those of our father Chapter - compatible with the people chosen by Sanguinius himself. The people here must be protected - they are part of our nature. Might I remind you, chaplain, that I myself was born on this planet.’

  ‘I could not prevent their slaughter, my lord. The scouts were enraged by the deviance.’

  ‘You could not, or would not, brother chaplain?’ intoned the hooded librarian.

  ‘And what of the dead scouts, Tenjin? What of Endo, who even know lays half-mad, ranting on the Table of Lestrallio in the Apothecarion?’ There was an odd quality in Ansatsu’s tone that made Tenjin recoil. The librarian also shifted his stance slightly, as though steadying his own thoughts. There was a vague elation in the air.

  Tenjin flicked his gaze from the high priest to the librarian and back again. Something was wrong. The Deathwatch Marine was no stranger here; he bore the markings of an Angel Sanguine, battered and scraped by innumerable encounters with unspeakable foes. When did he return to the Chapter, and what horrors did he bring back in the darkness of his expanded consciousness?

  ‘You are confined to your quarters, chaplain, until we determine your fate.’ The high priest waved his left hand casually and the librarian clicked to attention, bowed slightly, and then stepped up to escort Tenjin back to his rooms.

  The adamantium door slid closed behind him with a solid crunch, leaving Tenjin alone in his sparse quarters. He thought back over the events of the last weeks. He had been demoted from the Veteran First Company by the high priest, despite the fact that he was the only chaplain who could control their Rage. For an anxious minute, Tenjin wondered what kind of havoc the Death Company was raging out in the frontiers without him, while he had been reassigned to the novice Tenth Company, the scouts - a company always in need of guidance, to be sure, but not usually one teetering on the cusp of the Thirst.

  Nonetheless, on his first mission, a fairly routine home world scouting sortie, he had lost control of an entire squad. The scouts had slaughtered indiscriminately, even killing three of their own. One was so lost to himself that he was even now strapped under adamantium shackles, raging against his daemons on the Tablet of Lestrallio. Tenjin had never heard of a scout being so utterly lost.

  On the other side of the chamber, Tenjin spied his battered copy of the Codex Sanguine. His was one of the few original copies that remained, inherited from the veteran Chaplain Reontrex. It contained the restricted sections on the Curse that the Angels Sanguine had inherited from the Blood Angels - only chaplains and the high priests were permitted access to these pages. Tenjin clicked a switch, releasing the transparent cabinet that controlled the atmosphere around the ancient text. He carefully lifted the volume from its pedestal and sat in meditation. The familiar pages washed through him; he didn’t need to read them, for long ago they were committed to his photographic memory. Holding the book merely reassured him - he was touching a piece of the Angels’ ancient legacy. He read in contemplative silence, with his eye lids gently closed over his tired eyes.

  So it was that after the terrible death of Sanguinius the Blood Angels were divided into myriad successors, of which the Angels Sanguine were the most glorious and faithful to his image. But the blood of Sanguinius himself no longer ran with life, so what little remained was drained into the Red Grail of the Blood Angels, from whence it was consumed by the high priests of the successor Chapters. Thus could the blood and vitality of Sanguinius be preserved in the bodies of his children. New initiates and neophytes in the Angels Sanguine would be injected with the blood of their high priest and would drink from the Grail of Angels, overflowing with this blood, partaking in the essence of Sanguinius himself through the medium of his Chosen One. The omophagae organ of the neophyte then works to transpose the blood of Sanguinius’ Chosen into the soul of each Marine - thus each successor Chapter gradually took on the characteristics of its high priests, the Chosen. The Angels Sanguine drew their essence from Sanguinius himself and from the courage and honour of Servius, the first high priest of this ancient Chapter -

  Tenjin broke out of his me
ditation, struck by a terrible realisation. He scanned his enhanced memory, searching for recollections of each Marine to whom he had administered as they succumbed to the Rage or the Thirst. The pattern was undeniable - before Ansatsu had become the high priest, the Rage was focussed in the veteran companies of the Angels Sanguine, presumably brought on by increasing and persistent exposure to bloody battle. Since Ansatsu had taken the Grail of Angels, however, incidents of the Rage had started to increase in the more junior companies. Tenjin’s recent experience with the scout squad was the culmination of a definite trend.

  What had Ansatsu said to him in the temple: all the tribes of Baalus Trine are at least slightly mutated. There had been a hint of satisfaction to his tone, Tenjin realised in hindsight. He also realised that the Angels Sanguine drew their new recruits from these mutants - that Ansatsu himself had been recruited from amongst their number, the first Baalus Trine Marine to rise to the rank of high priest. In the blood of the high priest runs a strain of deviance! Tenjin could hardly contain his visceral response to this insight, and he was on his feet in an instant, searching for a weapon. The purest blood of Sanguinius was diluted and curdled by the sullied blood of Ansatsu before being injected into the neophytes - of course the Thirst would strike increasingly at the novices, as the essence of Sanguinius was drowned out by the pollution of Ansatsu. The Grail of Angels was transformed into a Grail of Damnation. How long would it take for the whole Chapter to be ruined beyond repair? By the Throne, numbers were low enough already. Tenjin resolved that this must end, now.

  ‘Endo, can you hear me, my child?’ Ansatsu gazed affectionately down at the young scout and smiled. ‘Well done, my son. Well done.’ The scout bucked and thrashed under the admantium shackles, shrieking at the unseen images that tortured his soul and screaming in agony as his blood burned.