A fraction of a second had passed from the perception of danger to the reaction. Gavallan had barely begun to turn.
A fraction of a second too long.
Otto looked upon his prize. His face lit with triumph. He smiled with the relief of the well and truly fooled.
Then he changed.
The metamorphosis was swift. It occurred with the intake of a single breath. The might of the sword swept over Otto. It swallowed his uniform and merged it with his body. It took away his features and his hair. He became a physical shadow, nothing but a silhouette, a shape to wield the Blade.
The shape that had been Otto brought the sword back. Gavallan finished turning. The Purifiers opened fire. The shadow absorbed the bolter shells and swung the sword with perfect accuracy. Antwyr sliced through the seam between gorget and helmet. The blow was the embodiment of decades of hate. It cut halfway through Gavallan’s neck.
Crowe was less than a step away.
He caught Gavallan with one arm as he fell. The legend’s blood fountained into the air. It fell upon the vengeful blade and upon the Knight of the Flame. Gavallan made no sound.
‘Mine!’ Mnay’salath screamed. ‘Give me the sword!’ It dropped Vendruhn. She had been the lure, and was of no interest any longer. The grasping right hand reached for the Blade.
Antwyr flashed. Mnay’salath’s talon-like fingers fell to the floor. ‘Not yours!’ the shape cried. Its voice bore some resemblance to Otto’s, but its ferocity belonged to Antwyr. The serrated shout resounded in the throne room and in Crowe’s mind. ‘All is mine! The path of blood is mine!’
The daemon, its body smouldering, its contours ragged, snatched at the shadow. Daemonettes and fiends rushed at it. The Purifiers blasted all the abominations with shells and incinerator flame. Crowe stood over the fallen Gavallan. His limbs were heavy. His soul was exhausted from the abandoned banishment ritual. He attacked the shadow with the desperate energy of wrathful grief. The flame of purification shot from his outstretched arm. Storm bolter shells and psychic fire hit the shape at the same time. It snarled and jumped the moment Crowe’s fury struck. The shadow’s leap carried it over Crowe’s head and away from the daemons. It landed before the smashed window. It paused there, a thing that hovered in limbo between human and daemonic form. What had been Glas was gone, but the shape of Antwyr had yet to take its place. With a voice of mockery and graves it said, ‘You rejected your destiny, Garran Crowe. Now your fate is only ash.’ Then it threw itself out of the window, a darkness that dropped into the wider darkness of the night.
Mnay’salath howled. It stumbled forwards through the concentrated fire of the Purifiers. It spread its damaged arms and drew them together, as if pulling a curtain closed. A tide of darkness came in from the corners of the throne room. It fell across Crowe’s eyes. The Keeper of Secrets vanished from his sight. The other daemons abandoned the fight and rushed into the warp-born void.
‘It is there before us!’ Crowe shouted, training the last flames he could manage on a vagueness in the dark. He and his battle-brothers pursued the daemon. They fought to clear their minds of the suffocating shadow. They struck true.
The Keeper of Secrets screamed in pain and anger at its lost prize. But it worked its will with the cloud of shifting blackness. A great wind blew through the throne room, and the darkness shrouding Mnay’salath passed out of the windows and into the air. In flight or in pursuit, in another moment it was gone.
The shadows lifted. The lumoglobes of the throne room brightened over the carnage.
Crowe leaned over the castellan and removed his helmet. Gavallan’s tormented eyes locked on to his. Gavallan’s mouth was open, but he could neither speak nor breathe. Blood frothed from the crevasse in his throat.
‘You have earned your place at the Emperor’s side,’ Crowe told him.
But until they dimmed, Gavallan’s eyes glittered with the icy light of shame.
Chapter Nine
THE END OF THE DANCE
There was no sound of mourning on the night’s wind. It blew through the shattered window, carrying the echoes of terror and the smell of burning past Crowe. But there was no mourning. The city roiled in its fall. It rotted. The faithful and the apostate clashed. And there was nothing beyond the throne room to show that one of the great heroes of the Imperium was no more.
Crowe had run to the window in pursuit of the daemons. He was not sure how long he had been standing there, staring into the crimson-tainted dark. It could not have been many seconds, he thought. Enough, though, to face the reality of defeat. Enough to impose a cold rationality on himself, so the decisions he must now make would be the correct ones. And enough for him to see all the night and beyond the smoke to the ice of the stars, and to know that Gavallan’s death had not been marked.
No Grey Knight’s death would be known by the wider universe. His only possible memorial would be in the Dead Fields. Even so, at the loss of such a warrior as Gavallan, the earth should have cried out. The stars should have dimmed in grief.
Instead, the night went on. The terror and the killing in Egeta continued without pause or notice.
Something smashed behind Crowe. He turned. Sendrax had punched the throne, reducing it to splinters.
‘Every step,’ Sendrax snarled. ‘Every step. We have been led perfectly. What need have we of Prognosticars? We would save time by asking the Ruinous Powers themselves what they would have us do. We seem destined to act as they wish.’
The other Purifiers had gathered around Gavallan’s body. They stood in a circle, a silent honour guard, waiting for the Knights of the Flame to command. Near the doorway, Vendruhn stood hunched, shaking, her fists clenched. Her hair had been burned to stubble by the psychic fire. The back of her neck and her hands were blackened. Sores oozed. But the worst of her injuries, Crowe knew, were spiritual. How severe those wounds were he could not tell.
Vendruhn had her back to the Grey Knights. She faced her surviving troops, the few that there were. The mortals had retreated from the throne room. They, at least, showed some awareness that a death unlike others had occurred. They were silent out of fear and respect.
But Vendruhn’s silence was different, Crowe thought. Her grief and anger were so strong, they choked her voice.
Sendrax was still raging. ‘What steps have they arranged for us next?’ he shouted. ‘Are we amusing them as they would wish?’
‘Brother,’ Crowe said.
Sendrax stared at him. He marched over, kicking through wreckage and dissolving remains. His helm inches from Crowe’s, he said, ‘Do you have insight, brother? More of the insight that has served us so well thus far?’
Crowe said nothing. He did not point out that Sendrax was condemning Gavallan’s leadership. The other Knight of the Flame would realise that in his own time. Crowe had no desire to refute Sendrax’s accusations. They held a truth. It was a massive, painful truth. He acknowledged it, but he must not surrender to it. It wanted to be his sole truth. If he let it, it would crush him with shame and despair.
So he said nothing. He held the truth at bay so that he might counter it with a different one, a truth built of victory and redemption. Let Sendrax rage. Let him give voice to the nature of the defeat. Sendrax was proud. He resented the inflexibility of fate. And storm as he might now, it was not his duty to lead the mission. That fell to Crowe.
‘Flames!’ said Sendrax. ‘The Ruinous Powers would have us dance upon this stage? Then let us burn it!’ He faced the window. ‘Abomination!’ he yelled. ‘Antwyr, do you hear? The fire of Exterminatus comes for you!’
Vendruhn straightened at his words. She twitched. She turned around for a moment, her eyes a glittering darkness. Then she led her soldiers away from the doorway, back towards the tower staircase.
‘Brother,’ Crowe said again.
‘What is it?’ Sendrax snapped.
‘We cannot i
nvoke Exterminatus. The Black Blade will not perish, even if Sandava II does.’
Sendrax scowled. He did not contradict Crowe. Good, Crowe thought. He understands. For all his grief and anger, he understands. The Blade was indestructible. That was why it had to be imprisoned. The annihilation of Sandava II would only put it beyond reach.
‘Then what?’ Sendrax said.
‘You are right, brother. We have been led on this dance. Now it ends.’
‘How can you be sure?’ He was listening, at least.
‘Because Antwyr has accomplished its purpose. It has escaped us. It will seek now to ensure we do not recapture it. So we force it to react to our moves. The initiative is ours.’
Sendrax grunted. The sound that emerged from his helm grille was a burst of electronic distortion. It could have been anger or bitter humour. ‘A fine speech, Garran,’ he said.
‘Do you doubt it?’
‘Would it matter if I did?’
Crowe did not answer.
‘Let it be so.’ The storm of Sendrax’s anger had passed. ‘Tell me how we will take the sword back.’ He looked at their silent brothers, and the stillness they surrounded. ‘Tell me how we will avenge our castellan.’
There were no more daemons within the inner wall when Vendruhn emerged from the keep. Captain Lehnert was waiting for her. His uniform was torn and soaked with his blood. A long claw gash ran from his right temple, down the side of his face and his neck. His weathered features were no longer those of a jaded veteran. He had seen too many new horrors this night. War was fresh for him again, in the worst possible way. Even so, his salute was crisp. ‘The palace is held, general,’ he said, as if the victory had meaning.
From the other side of the wall, Vendruhn heard the wounds of the city tearing itself apart.
‘Where is Colonel Droste?’ Vendruhn asked. He had been commanding the companies charged with holding the palace district.
‘Dead, general.’
‘And the enemy?’ She could believe the militia had contained the daemons. She could not imagine the abominations had been destroyed.
‘Gone,’ Lehnert said. He gestured in the direction of the wall. ‘When that… that thing…’ He looked up at the tower’s crown as if expecting the nightmare to hear him and return.
‘I understand,’ Vendruhn said. No need for Lehnert to finish. The great daemon had taken its legions with it. Mnay’salath and all its furies were pursuing the thing that had been her father.
But if this was so, what then of the tumult she heard beyond the wall? It was the cry of a worthless, faithless population turning on itself in panic, obeying the commands of abominations that had lost interest in it, still tearing down all Vendruhn’s family had built in the name of the Emperor.
All her father had stood for. All he had defended.
The grief cut through her again, savage and ragged as a blow from a chainsword. The only defence against it was anger. A hatred bright as incandescent iron, never to be quenched except in an ocean of apostate blood.
Exterminatus, the Grey Knight had said. The word resonated in her soul. The syllables were a dire toll. Exterminatus. It was a shout and a whisper and a hiss. All were finality. It was the only true thing left for Sandava II. Exterminatus. She spoke the word in her head, over and over, as if through repetition the refrain would become reality.
The one called Crowe was wrong to forbid its use. But he had, so she would have to create the pyre for her world herself.
‘Colonel Lehnert,’ she said, and saw the wounded man take a warrior’s pride in his sudden promotion. ‘Gather our forces. Prepare them to march beyond the wall. If Egeta has chosen to fall from the Emperor’s light, then it deserves no mercy. We shall show it none.’
She would burn the city. She would serve justice on its citizenry. She would see every last soul in the capital put to the sword.
She already knew that would not be enough. She knew the grief and the hate would still be there. But the action was necessary. She would worry about another step only after this task was complete.
The new colonel left to carry out her orders. Vendruhn walked across the great square towards the wall. The flagstones were slick with blood. Bodies had turned the area into a mire of flesh. She passed civilians burned by las and disembowelled by sword, and soldiers of the militia twisted at strange angles, their broken faces contorted by pleasures beyond nightmare. There were no longer any remains of the abominations, but the traces of their acts were everywhere.
Vendruhn’s pulse beat the rhythm of her hate louder and louder. Her vision shrank to the wall ahead of her. In the grey periphery, she now saw only the twisted abstraction of atrocity.
She reached the wall. She mounted the staircase next to the gate. On the ramparts, she stood at the crenellations. She watched the city burn. She watched the mobs tear into each other. Bring me the sword, the daemon had commanded, and they still searched and killed and ruined. If she left the people to their devices, they would destroy themselves and the city on their own.
But there would be no punishment in that.
She lost track of time. She was mesmerised by the sight of the people she would execute, enveloped by the grasp of her hate. Exterminatus, she thought.
Exterminatus.
Exterminatus.
At length someone called her name. Vendruhn turned. Lehnert stood at the head of the stairs. ‘Do you wish to address the troops?’ he asked.
Vendruhn supposed she should. Morale was low. The militia had not been victorious. It had been spared annihilation by circumstance. Survival was by chance, losses were huge and the world had fallen to horrors of myth. Yes, she should speak to her soldiers. She should inspire them to new efforts.
All she had to offer was her hate. Let them share in it, then. If they were faithful, they already did.
‘Yes,’ she said to Lehnert as she moved away from the crenellations to join him. ‘Yes, I will speak to them.’
‘No,’ said a voice, harsh, metallic, majestic. ‘You will say nothing.’
Lehnert whirled. He gasped and stumbled back from the stairs. A moment later, the armoured form of Garran Crowe appeared. He marched up the final steps. He loomed over Vendruhn and her colonel.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Vendruhn. Though she had seen the Grey Knights brought low, defeated by the monster that had possessed her father, she was still awed by Crowe. His presence was much more than his height and the impregnability of his armour. It was more than the power she had witnessed him unleash against the daemons. It was all of this, and an aura of icy, unyielding, terrifying sanctity. How, she wondered, could unclean things exist in proximity to this being?
Perhaps they could not.
She felt her own existence become gossamer-thin before Crowe. She lived because he allowed it. If his judgement turned against her, there would be no recourse. Nor should there be.
‘You propose to destroy Egeta,’ Crowe said.
‘Yes.’ She did not question how he knew.
‘No. A more important duty lies before you. I will speak. You will hear. All of you.’
With that, Crowe turned his back on Vendruhn. He stood at the edge of the wall, looking down at what remained in Egeta of the Sandava II Militia. He waited, motionless, a colossus as immovable as the wall. Vendruhn stepped forwards to stand to his right. Lehnert took up a position a few yards further on. Crowe was doing her a courtesy, Vendruhn realised. He was allowing her to save face before the companies. He was not visibly undermining her authority. She knew she should be grateful. What she felt was resentment at the countermanded slaughter.
In the great square, the militia had gathered in columns. The formations were much smaller than they had been before. The Chimeras were fewer, and the ones present were all damaged, scarred by massive rents left by claws in their flanks and roofs. This was a much reduced army
. Still strong enough, Vendruhn thought, to turn the city to ash.
Crowe spoke. ‘Warriors of Sandava II,’ he said, ‘hear me.’ His helm’s voxcaster amplified his voice. It rang across the square, authority itself. ‘You have fought, and fought well. But there can be no rest for you yet. The enemy still walks upon your world. You have witnessed this enemy. Will you permit so foul a thing to exist?’ Where another speaker might have paused for an answer, letting the assembled men and women join in the energy of the speech, Crowe gave the soldiers their response.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You will not.
‘Hear me.
‘The enemy is not defeated, yet the enemy has fled. That is an act of fear. The foe is a great abomination. The foe is a defilement upon the face of the Imperium. The foe is strong, and yet it flees. My brothers and I will pursue. So will you. To do so is more than duty. It is the holy calling of every soul in the Imperium to destroy whatsoever is unclean.
‘Hear me!’
Crowe drew his force sword. He held it aloft. It blazed, a symbol of coruscating, deadly purity in the darkness of the night. The light surrounded Crowe. Vendruhn trembled. It took all her strength of will not to step away. The holy was as fearsome as the unholy. Crowe’s state was far beyond the mortal human. Sacred terror overwhelmed her, cutting through the rage, if only for these brief moments.
‘I am the edge of the Emperor’s sword!’ the Grey Knight roared. His words were as claps of thunder over the square. ‘I will strike the daemon down, and you will strike with me. Hear me and answer!’
A thousand mortal voices gave Crowe his answer, striving to match his thunder with their own.
The thunder swept over Vendruhn. It humbled her, but she felt no pride. She felt instead the frustration of vengeance delayed. And in the midst of her awe, doubt gnawed at her faith. Too many of its foundations had already been shattered.
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