by William King
Men screamed and I wondered what was happening because there was a note in the screams that I had never heard before. The psykers around Drake started to fall, their mouths open, their faces pale, blood gushing from mouths and nostrils and eye-sockets. It was not the same sound as the heretics made as they were slaughtered, it was something else, the sound of men who were losing their very souls, having them drawn from their bodies and offered up as a sacrifice to something greater.
Beams of light emerged from Drake’s hand and surged around the gateway, forming a lattice around it. His whole body was lit by the energies he wielded. His eyes blazed with the Emperor’s Light. Every one of the people who still communed with Drake stood frozen. Their eyes were wide, their mouths stretched in ghastly rictuses as if screams were being torn from their very souls. One by one, they toppled and died as if their life force was being wrenched from them and used to power whatever exorcism Drake performed.
The daemon began to oppose the inquisitor’s efforts and tried to get past Macharius in order to cut him down with its fiery blade. Macharius kept himself interposed. He stood between it and Drake. Seeing the Lord High Commander at risk, more and more of our soldiers pressed forwards. The Angel chopped down but it could not find a way through that wall of flesh that opposed it. What human courage and human muscle could achieve our soldiers did. They wanted to protect Macharius even at the cost of their own lives. They threw themselves forwards, again and again forming a rampart of blood and gristle. I saw Anton and Ivan struggle to get forwards. They were almost within striking distance of the Angel when I lost sight of them in the press.
I sensed the change in the atmosphere around us. Where once there was a wind of power blowing outwards into our world, now it felt as if the current was flowing in a different direction. All of the fire and energy seemed to be being sucked out of the air around us and returned to the place from which it had come, and as it did so I could see that the Angel of Fire was being drawn back into its own fiery realm. It fought every step of the way but, at last, it passed through the portal and that eerie gateway swirled shut.
And then suddenly, it was silent. The Angel of Fire was gone. The portal was closed, leaving only a strange shimmering in the air that vanished even as we watched. Drake stood surrounded by bodies. In the ultimate crisis his bodyguard of psykers had laid down their lives and more to protect him and to close the way through which the daemon had come. The high inquisitor looked wearier than any man I had ever seen. His shoulders slumped, his eyes were half-closed, he had aged a couple of decades in as many minutes. Macharius walked over to him and said something, I have no idea what.
I looked around to see what had become of my friends. Ivan lay on the ground clutching at his arm. Half his face seemed to have melted and I could tell from the set of his eyes that he was in pain. Anton knelt beside him, offering him liquor from a flask. The New Boy stood guard over them both, his lasgun held tight in his white-knuckled hands. The Understudy was beside him. His expression was as blank as ever. The titanic events we had just witnessed did not seem to have left a mark on his psyche.
My eyes kept tracking round looking for danger. There did not seem to be any. Few heretics remained and those that did seemed to have lost all will to fight. More and more of our troops entered the sanctum. Their faces wore a relieved expression as if they understood the fate we had so narrowly avoided.
I strode over to Anton and Ivan. ‘How is it going?’
‘We’re alive,’ Anton said.
Ivan just gurgled in pain. He looked up at me as if he desperately wanted to say something. I leaned in to hear what it was he had to say.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Tell that bastard Anton that if he does not stop standing on my hand, I will cut his nadgers off!’
Looking down I could see that one of Anton’s heavy boots was indeed on Ivan’s fleshly hand. I pushed him off. At this point the Guardsmen present started chanting Macharius’s name. It started slowly and softly at first, but it grew louder and it was taken up by all of the Guard present, the word rolling like thunder down the stairwell and echoing through the cathedral. It seemed as if the chant was taken up by the entire army. The stones themselves vibrated to the name and it seemed as if the word would echo out from the world of Karsk and across the galaxy.
I suppose it did. The High Commander’s name became a battle-cry that would ring out down the years and across thousands of worlds. He would change the destiny of our sector and the Imperium and I suppose it all started there. If I close my eyes, I can still picture the scene so clearly, and hear the word echo through my bones like a prophecy of triumph and doom: ‘Macharius. Macharius! MACHARIUS!’
Document under seal. Extract From the Decrypted Personal Files of Inquisitor Hyronimus Drake.
Possible evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake.
Cross-reference to Exhibit 107D-21H (Report to High Inquisitor Toll).
On the day after his confrontation with the Angel of Fire I stood with Macharius on the platform in the great crematorium in the southern sector of Irongrad. He looked down on the huge conveyor belt. Tens of thousands of bodies lay on it, all of them in the uniform of the Imperial Guard. The motivating engines were silent. The belts were not moving. Macharius looked down on those endless ranks of the dead as if trying to memorise them. I asked him why he had summoned me. He thanked me for my aid against the Angel of Fire and asked me what I was going to say in my report to my superiors.
I could tell what was on his mind. We had stood in the presence of a great cosmic evil. Men have been killed for less. Entire armies and worlds have, for fear that they might be tainted and turned against the Imperium. Macharius was wondering what I was going to say, whether his armies would be destroyed and he would be assassinated in his sleep or put to death by some other arm of the Imperium.
What could I tell him? He had been tested and he had not been found wanting. Perhaps he was the one we had been waiting for, for so long. Perhaps that is why the Angel wanted him as well. He would have made just as terrifying a tool of the powers of darkness as he was a champion of the Imperium.
We looked at each other. He had his hand on his weapon. I knew then that he was considering killing me if I gave him the wrong answer. I smiled and told him that killing me would not make any difference. The Imperium has other agents. I am merely one among legion. I told him I meant him no harm, that I would report that I had encountered a manifestation of Chaos and dealt with it. He asked me why.
I lied, of course. I could not tell him the real reason a faction of the Inquisition wanted him alive, just as several factions wished him dead. I told him it was because the Imperium needed him, that it must be reunited, that gigantic challenges awaited us in the new millennium and that the realm of mankind needed to be strong to face them. It played to his vanity. I could tell that at least part of him believed while the deeper and more subtle part of his mind sought the truth. There was nothing else to tell him so I asked him why he was here in the crematorium, what he hoped to achieve.
He told me of some ancient kings of Terra. They had a tradition that after a battle they would ride across the battlefield and look upon the faces of the dead who were there because of their will. In this way they understood the cost of their statecraft and what obedience to their orders truly meant. He told me that every one of those men down there on those conveyor belts was there because he had been following his orders, then he pulled the great lever that started the engines. The great gates of the crematorium furnaces opened in a blast of heat and the long lines of bodies rolled into the flames.
Macharius was still watching them when I departed hours later. I heard he remained there for a day and a night and still the bodies burned.
About the Author
William King’s short stories have appeared in The Year’s Best SF, Zenith, Interzone and White Dwarf. He is the creator of the Gotrek & Felix novels and the author of four Space Wolf novels
starring Ragnar Blackmane. His Tyrion & Teclis series opens with Blood of Aenarion. He lives in Prague.
Visit William King's blog at: williamking.me
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Warhammer 40,000
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About the Author