Warden of the Blade

by David Annandale

  An unnameable thing crouched amid the debris. The rags of a uniform clung to its limbs. They were the only sign that the daemon had burst from a human frame. The monster was twice the height of a mortal. Its many limbs were the dirty grey of neglected tombstones. They ended in half-formed pincers and claws. One turned into a spur of bone four feet long. Its head was a sunken horror of fleshy horns surrounding a misshapen skull. It had fallen to its knees, but when it saw the Purifiers, it tried to rise. It failed, and scrabbled forwards instead. Its joints made brittle clicks. Its jaw opened in frustrated hate. A hissing wind emerged from its throat, foetid, a last breath held in for far too long.

  Gavallan shot the daemon. Storm bolter shells exploded through its chest. The thing gaped at the hole in its midsection. Crowe could see through the body to the wall beyond.

  The daemon whined, long and high, the piping of a splintered flute. Two long notes formed the beginning of an unholy song. They faded to silence before there was a third. The daemon collapsed in on itself, a crumpling husk. Soon there was nothing left but dry fragments resembling a carpet of insect bodies.

  ‘A poor foe,’ said Carac, sounding disappointed, still burning to send more daemonkind to oblivion.

  ‘It had been weakened,’ Crowe replied. ‘And it was incomplete. Did you not recognise the form?’ The creature had been an approximation of a greater daemon of the Dark Prince.

  ‘I did,’ said Carac. ‘It must have put too much of itself into its foul art.’ He made a sweeping gesture, taking in the entirety of the altered ship.

  Crowe shook his head. ‘No. This was a remnant, constructed from the energies left behind when the source departed. We have been fighting the echo of the real foe.’

  Gavallan pointed to the wreckage. ‘The Emperor grant we find evidence of where the threat has gone, then.’ He withdrew from the chamber, taking with him the dangerous, whispering blade chained to his back. He headed back down the hall in the direction of the bridge. The snarls of Antwyr faded as the castellan put some distance between himself and the squads.

  ‘You’re right, brother,’ Carac said. ‘My thoughts were clouded.’

  ‘That is to be expected,’ said Crowe. He turned to the remains of the desk. Sheets of vellum and cracked data-slates lay mixed with the debris. He saw faint ripples of the warp over the parchment. Fate lurked here somewhere, contained in the most mundane objects.

  The search began. Beneath a relatively intact slab of wood from the surface of the desk, Crowe found a data-slate that still functioned. He scrolled through its contents. It was an inventory of the Envoy’s relics. Crowe ran his eye down the columns of names and descriptions. He saw nothing anomalous until he reached the entry for a funerary mask. Its presumed origin had been revised and questioned. More interesting was the red icon that had been appended to the entry in the last few days.

  ‘A relic of unknown origin went missing recently,’ Crowe said.

  ‘That is too suggestive to be a coincidence,’ said Sendrax.

  ‘Agreed.’

  A few minutes later, Doran found the captain’s log. Many of the pages were torn, but the most recent entries were still present. He held the book in his right arm, a bionic prosthetic. The log was dwarfed by his metal hand.

  ‘The last port of call before Dierna was Sandava II,’ Doran announced.

  Sandava, Crowe thought. The other name he had read aloud from Gavallan’s transcriptions. He joined Sendrax’s squad brother and looked at the record. ‘Not long before the mask was listed as missing,’ he said. He voxed Gavallan. ‘Castellan,’ he said, ‘we have picked up the scent of our quarry.’ The certainty he felt was matched by his unease at the sense of an indefinable trap closing.

  ‘Where?’ Gavallan asked.

  ‘Sandava II.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gavallan. He did not sound surprised. He sounded resigned.

  The trail was too easy to find, Crowe thought. We have stopped nothing. The Grey Knights were being lured onwards. Yet there was no choice but to follow this path.

  Chapter Five

  THE COLD MIRACLE

  There were monsters on the road ahead. They gambolled towards the lead Chimera, their song of sensuous pain bouncing off the hab façades. More creatures raced alongside the retreating armoured column. Still more were coming up behind, spilling from side streets, leaping from windows and doorways, a growing flood of grotesqueries, things that Vendruhn dared not look at for any longer than it took to aim the heavy bolter. She fired in long bursts, always rotating, never letting her gaze rest. She saw the street in a blur of unholy flesh and fire. She would not stare. She sensed the danger of paralysing terror, and she sensed the even graver risk of fascination.

  She would not be lured. She would not fall.

  She was still holding at bay the word that defined these monsters. She was not ready to take on the implications of daemon.

  There were almost a dozen vehicles in the column, brought together from fallen units across the cathedral district. The transports had left behind any infantry not already on board. There had been no choice. The horrors were too many, too fast, too strong. In the first few minutes of the frenzy, when the worshippers pouring from the cathedral had revealed themselves to be maddened heretics, Vendruhn had thought perhaps she could regain control of the situation. But then the transformations had begun. A plague of abominations had torn the militia formations apart. There had been no chance to regroup. Perhaps, if the troops could have retaliated in strength, they might have resisted, but chaos had engulfed the district. The entire sector had to be abandoned. The best she could hope for now was to salvage something from the retreat.

  The Rybas river cut Egeta in half from north to south. Vendruhn had ordered all the bridges demolished. Her column was rushing for the last one. Make it across, she thought. Less than a mile. Make it across and we’ll fight back.

  ‘General…’ The voice on the vox was hard to recognise. It was cracking with strains Vendruhn was forcing herself not to imagine.

  ‘Siedler?’ she said. That couldn’t be the colonel.

  ‘General, I’m sorry…’

  The Chimera swerved to avoid one of the things with hooves and horns. The sudden jerk almost threw Vendruhn from the turret hatch. The left corner of the hull sideswiped the beast, crushing one of its legs. It seized the Chimera and began to climb on top. Vendruhn recovered her balance and spun the heavy bolter to face the abomination. She held the trigger down until the shells had turned the thing into a mist of ichor.

  ‘Danek!’ she yelled. ‘Drive straight! Run them down! Don’t look at them!’

  She couldn’t hear Danek’s answer, but the engine roared louder and the Chimera leapt ahead, as if the machine itself were desperate to reach the bridge.

  ‘Siedler,’ Vendruhn said, ‘where are you?’ The colonel had been charged with controlling the pilgrim movements in the northern sector. ‘Have you blown the bridge?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ Siedler said. ‘We had to destroy it before we crossed it. We’re trapped.’ Gunfire rattled in the background. ‘We can’t break through. We…’ Her voice cracked. When she spoke again, she wasn’t speaking as a colonel, but Vendruhn’s friend, desperate and breaking before the horror that confronted her. ‘Vendruhn,’ she said, ‘what are they?’

  ‘Our enemy, Hansa.’ Vendruhn stared too long at one of the lithe creatures as it danced towards the column. The sinuosity of its movements reached into her soul. She gunned the monster down, looking away before she was done. The thing was dangerous even in defeat. Its mere existence was a threat.

  ‘Just another enemy,’ she lied.

  ‘No,’ said Siedler. ‘They’re more than that.’ She let out a long, tearing howl.

  Vendruhn winced. She had fought alongside Siedler her entire military life. They had saved each other’s lives more than once. Vendruhn trusted Siedler like she truste
d no other officer. She believed in her as she believed in the necessity of the Glas dynasty’s rule of Sandava II. Siedler was a rock. She was unwavering in her devotion to the Emperor.

  But she howled, and Vendruhn heard the terminal agony of her soul. The wail did not stop. It seemed it would rip the vox apart. Vendruhn shouted too, and fired a continuous burst from flank to front to flank. She could have closed that vox-channel. She did not. She bore witness with her comrade as long as she could.

  The gunfire on Siedler’s end ceased. The scream went on. It changed. It became both rougher and more musical. It transformed into a singing, mocking laughter. It was no longer human, though it knew humans. It knew their hungers and their weaknesses intimately.

  Vendruhn killed the feed.

  Siedler had fallen. She had given way to the unholy. Vendruhn had seen how the monsters manifested themselves. They burst out of, or transformed, humans. That was the fate that had taken Siedler.

  If she can fall, any of us can.

  No. No. I will not. Even if everyone else succumbs, I will not.

  The truth of her resolution gave Vendruhn strength. It gave her fire. It gave her hate. As she trained the heavy bolter on the enemy, she found that she could look at the monsters now. They terrified her, but they could not touch her spirit. There was triumph in the midst of fear as she blasted the daemons.

  She let herself think the word now. She was strong enough in her anger to face it. There was no other name for these things. They were no xenos. They came from beyond the veil of the real. Their existence made a lie of what her faith had taught, and the lie had burst, ravening, from the cathedral.

  The Emperor protects, she thought.

  Doctrine was wrong, but her belief in the Father of Mankind was unshaken. He was her shield and her wrath. She would kill for Him. The abominations were not invincible. She was cutting them down. With enough power, she could destroy them all.

  And so she would. She would save her world, cost be damned.

  She would fight without limits. The prospect gave her pleasure, and she shouted with renewed faith as she hammered the road ahead with shells.

  The Chimera’s multi-laser fired too, and the barrage at last cleared the way of daemons. Only fifty yards remained before the span of the Cardinal Gandering XI bridge. Danek pushed the engine harder. The Chimera shot forwards.

  Vendruhn looked back. The entire column was picking up speed. But so was the flood of horror. More and more and more daemons filled the avenue. Heavy bolters and lascannons could not keep them at bay. The tide was coming to swallow the transports.

  The bridge was narrow. It was barely wide enough for a single Chimera. There lay Vendruhn’s hope of escape, of a regrouping, and of a counter-offensive.

  The command vehicle swept up onto the bridge. It rumbled over the Rybas. The main turret could no longer fire without hitting another Chimera. Vendruhn still had some targets for the heavy bolter, and she hit them hard, buying her troops a bit more time and space. One vehicle after another reached the bridge. The abominations engulfed the rear transports. No amount of gunfire could keep them off. They clambered onto roofs. They ripped off hatches and side doors. Vendruhn could not see what happened to the soldiers inside. The screams, though, reached her, even this far away.

  The wave moved forwards. It claimed another Chimera.

  Vendruhn would not be able to save the whole column.

  ‘Barratz,’ she voxed, ‘are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, general,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘Very well. Stand by.’ She watched the rear, unable to help, unable to act. She stopped firing. There were no daemons in her range. There was nothing she could do except choose the moment to give the order.

  Her Chimera reached the other side of the five hundred-foot span. Danek pulled it off to the side, next to the embankment wall. Vendruhn climbed out of the hatch to stand on the roof, grabbing as much height as she could. Barratz ran up, detonator in hand. Vendruhn gave the grey-haired sergeant a curt nod. ‘What have you heard about this side of the river?’ she asked without looking away from the progress of the armoured column. The second and third vehicles had reached the western bank.

  ‘The conflict is still contained to the eastern sector of Egeta, general,’ Barratz said.

  ‘Good,’ said Vendruhn. Good? she thought. We have lost half the city. How is that good?

  We are still fighting. The foulness has not won. That is what is good.

  Two more vehicles made it across the bridge. The greater part of the column was through. But the wave of unholy flesh and claws was surging forwards. It was a third of the way over.

  Vendruhn hesitated a few more seconds, weighing the moment of sacrifice. Was there time for one more Chimera to reach safety? How many good and loyal troops would she kill with her choice?

  She watched the flow of monstrosities. The songs of the daemons drew closer. A madness of sensuous excess was coming for the administrative sector of Egeta. Her flesh prickled, her body anticipating the arrival of infernal vistas of sensation.

  The choice was clear. ‘Do it now,’ she said.

  Barratz depressed the detonator. A series of explosions rocked the bridge’s supports. Fireballs erupted in the centre of the roadway. The entire structure rose from the water, hurling daemons and vehicles into the air. Then everything fell, disintegrating in a maelstrom of flame and smoke and a white curtain of water. The booms of the explosions and the cracking thunder of shattered stone rolled across the river.

  The sound had not faded when Vendruhn spoke into the vox. ‘All artillery units,’ she said, ‘commence fire.’ We have retreated only to punish, she thought.

  The barrage was enormous. Every long-range cannon and mortar still in the militia’s control targeted the eastern embankment of the Rybas. The night sky shrieked with the descent of shells. A strip of the city a hundred yards wide, running for miles to the north and south, became a firestorm. Vendruhn felt the beat of terrible hammers shake the ground even on this side of the river. The eastern contours of her city vanished behind a barrier of dark, billowing red and clouds of black smoke. A volcano opened its maw beneath the embankment and unleashed its molten rage.

  Scorched earth. This was Vendruhn’s second sacrifice. She mourned the soldiers she had killed on the bridge. They had fought well, done their duty and obeyed her orders faithfully. They had still been following her at the very instant of their deaths. She mourned them, yes, but she was glad of what she had done for them. She had rewarded them, sending them to the Emperor’s side, their souls untainted.

  Vendruhn did not mourn the tens of thousands of civilians crushed and incinerated by the bombardment. She had no doubt that many had not yet succumbed to possession. The daemons had been arriving from the epicentre of the heresy, the cathedral. They had only just been reaching the riverside sectors. The civilians would be expiring in terror of the abominations and the shells. Let them burn. They were not fighting to defend their city or their souls. Those who had not reached the cathedral before the pilgrimage had turned into madness would have retreated to cower in their homes. They were not worthy of salvation, either bodily or spiritual. Vendruhn brought them punishment instead.

  She would leave nothing standing along the eastern embankment. Let the enemy try to cross the barrier of the shelling. Nothing would pass. She would lay waste to the city until she could muster the force of arms to take it back.

  She watched the conflagration of her judgement. Instead of defeat, she tasted grim joy.

  ‘The Envoy of Discipline is no more,’ Crowe said to Gavallan. The Sacrum Finem had fired torpedoes into it until the engines had ruptured and a plasma explosion had taken the ship. For a few seconds, the Dierna System had gained a second sun.

  Gavallan nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You did not come here simply to tell me that, though, did you?’

  ‘N
o,’ Crowe admitted. He could have used the vox for that. He had come to Gavallan’s quarters to talk of other matters. The chamber was cut off from the rest of the ship by a tall spiral staircase and a series of doors strengthened by hexagrammic wards. The space was small and dark. There was no glassteel window onto the void here. It was more like the cell of a prisoner than the quarters of a brotherhood champion. It was, though, conducive to meditation and prayer.

  This too is my future, Crowe thought.

  ‘I would like to discuss the Black Blade’s role in our journey,’ he said. He looked at Antwyr, chained to the wall much as it had been in the Chambers of Purity.

  ‘I see,’ said Gavallan. He was seated on a stool in the centre of the chamber. He had removed his helmet, and Crowe was struck by how much more grey and lined his features had become even since the start of the mission. The sword, he thought, was working on Gavallan in ways he could not sense. ‘You are disturbed by the coincidence of the names,’ Gavallan went on.

  ‘Dierna and Sandava were the two names I read aloud from your transcript,’ said Crowe. ‘Now we journey from one to the other. Brother castellan, that cannot be a coincidence.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Gavallan. ‘What, then, do you conclude?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But I dislike the aura of inevitability that has descended on our mission. I do not know what role the sword has played in these events. The fact that it has played one makes me very uneasy.’

  Antwyr’s amused snarl rasped in his head. This is but a taste, said the sword. Think what might be accomplished. Think what we shall do. Your destiny is written. All you can do is delay it. Why commit yourself to pointless resistance? Why waste existence on futility?

  ‘You cannot assume the Blade has had a part to play in these events,’ Gavallan cautioned. ‘It is powerful, but it is contained.’