Shadowsword

by Guy Haley

  Suliban sat against the fighting deck wall. Jonas tipped his head back and stared at the black clouds.

  ‘A nice speech, commissar.’

  Suliban stared ahead dourly. ‘I meant every word. I believe every word.’

  ‘I know,’ said Jonas quietly. ‘So do I.’

  Suliban gave him a grateful look. It struck Jonas then how young he was, this commissar with the power of life and death over them all. A hand of the Emperor, barely old enough to be called a man.

  The throaty roar of engines broke his train of thought. Jonas stood and put his head over the parapet.

  Headlights were speeding through the storm in close formation towards the rear of the Stormlord.

  ‘Emperor save us,’ he said. ‘There are more.’

  Lux Imperator pulled away. Spouting blue smoke, it shuddered forwards, took a hard left turn and drove towards the sounds of combat, anti-personnel weaponry barking, leaving Bannick sprawled in the mud. They had left him for dead.

  With long strides that seemed nightmarishly slow, the Space Marine paced across the torn ground to where Bannick lay.

  Bannick’s heart froze, but his hand did not. His fingers closed around the wet, gritty hilt of his power sword, still scabbarded and belted to his waist. He got unsteadily to his feet. His head spun from the impact, his ribs were bruised and every breath hurt. The Space Marine drew nearer, unaware of the blade Bannick held hidden behind his back. As he came within thrusting distance, Bannick flicked the activation stud on his sword. The scabbard disintegrated around the weapon. He pulled it free. Ignoring the ache in his chest, he executed a perfect duellist’s thrust. The disruptive field flared as it encountered the Traitor Space Marine’s plastron, piercing one eye of the brazen face cast upon it with a crack. The blade point slid after, into the Space Marine’s heart.

  A back-handed blow sent Bannick back down and skidding through the sloppy mud. The Space Marine stood transfixed by Bannick’s blade. His shoulders moved in convulsively, as if he would catch the sword by the movement. He let out a gasp of surprise, and gripped the sword blade in his hand. The field banged again as the Traitor Space Marine’s fingers closed around it. The other hand groped for the hilt’s activation stud.

  Bannick scrambled backwards, half swimming in the mud. The Space Marine hunched over the sword for a moment, not moving. He dared not think he had killed it, but hope undid his best intentions.

  It was not to be. The Space Marine’s fingers found the stud and deactivated the disruption field. With a grunt, he drew out the power sword. In his grip, it seemed the smallest of things, a child’s toy. He threw it aside into the mud and stood erect painfully.

  The Space Marine came to stand over Bannick, reached his hands to his helm and undid clasps there. Small jets of air hissed from uncoupled seals, heavy with a perfume strong enough for Bannick to smell in the rain.

  Bannick blinked gritty water from his eyes. The man revealed beneath the helmet was beautiful, more perfect than the most exquisitely carved statue in a cathedral, more finely formed than those artworks that purported to show the inherent superiority of the human form over all others in the galaxy.

  Stark, purple tattoos marked his face. His lips were full, nose strong, cheekbones perfect in their angle and sharpness, and he held himself with a bearing more refined than the highest Paragonian aristocrat. His skin was flawless, bright, and his blue-white hair was cropped close to his skull. Bannick’s breath caught in his throat. For all his perfection, there was an air of ineffable sorrow about the man. He looked down at Bannick with bright eyes that wept quicksilver tears into the rain.

  ‘That was a good thrust. You are a fine swordsman, for a mortal. For the first time in a thousand years, I am wounded,’ he said. ‘For the first time in ten thousand, I came close to death.’ The language he used was almost incomprehensible. It was a form of Gothic, but full of strange stresses and archaic grammatical forms. The Space Marine took a step forwards. He was as solid as a tower, clad in heavy armour covered in soft leather. Bannick shrank back when he made out the outlines of a flattened human face, eyes and mouth stitched shut, wrapped around his greave. ‘Never in all the years of the long war has a mere man caused me harm. You have destroyed my birth heart. I shall never have another.’ The Space Marine’s eyes closed and he tilted his face into the downpour. ‘The feeling of loss is... exquisite. I remember times I thought never to recall as I contemplate its destruction. I have memories of a time that was lost brought out by the pain. Such pain. It is a blessing. I thank you.’ He looked down at Bannick and smiled. The lips were perfect, the teeth behind them perfect, and the malice behind them the most perfectly formed of all. ‘I should not wish you to miss out on such experience. I shall repay your gift. You are blessed. We shall travel the roads of agony together.’

  He snatched out a long, silver blade from a scabbard at his belt, and knelt, licking his lips in anticipation. Bannick tried to scramble backwards, but the Space Marine slammed down the heel of his hand into Bannick’s forearm, pinning him fast. Were it not for the softness of the ground beneath, his arm would surely have been broken. The knife slid into his sleeve and parted it with no resistance.

  ‘I shall find you a fine nerve to pluck. You shall sing the song of pain, and we shall rejoice, for no sensation is wasted, and my master, Slaanesh, will be most gratified.’ He looked Bannick dead in the eye. ‘Be joyful. There is no purer form of offering than gratification.’

  The knife tip pricked his skin. Bannick felt nothing as it opened his flesh, it was so sharp. But then the point bit into some vital pathway, and he sang indeed.

  There was a roaring through the pain. Yellow light fell onto the pair in the mud. The rapid report of a boltgun on full auto rang out, riddling the traitor’s body. The Space Marine fell away with a sigh of pleasure. The knife slipped agonisingly out of Bannick’s flesh. He sat. Agony coursed up his arm and he nearly fainted. The deafening rumble of Righteous Vengeance’s mega-bolter sounded sporadically. Lux Imperator’s bolters chattered away almost meekly by comparison. Both tanks were away from him, lumbering silhouettes in the rain whose angles were lit sporadically and confusingly by the battle. The shouts and screams of frightened men competed with the fire of automatic weaponry.

  A huge, blocky combat bike came to a sliding halt. A figure dismounted and strode towards him, tall and imposing as the dead traitor, framed by the headlamp of his steed. Another Space Marine, armoured and girded for war. His armour was black and trimmed in red, bedecked with skulls, bones and other talismans of grisly aspect. This new monster stood over the injured Bannick, eye-lenses glaring. The figure moved his bolter, and Bannick expected it to point at his head, and awaited the hammer-blow detonation in his skull. But the Space Marine only shifted his weapon so that he might hold it one-handed. He leaned forwards, and offered his left gauntlet to Bannick, fingers spread wide.

  ‘Hail to you, though poorly met on this day of torrents and of treachery. You have survived one of the worst creatures this galaxy has to offer, son of holy Terra, and you yet live. The Emperor of Mankind watches over you. Take my hand and be risen from the earth. Your struggles for the Imperium are not yet done.’

  Bannick clutched the warrior’s arm. His shock subsided. A small force of Space Marines had been with them since Kalidar. He recognised the armour now, the emblem of the gothic cross blazoned on the pauldrons and chest. He was suddenly cold, and his teeth chattered with the same insistency as the bolters in the distance. ‘You are not going to kill me. You are of the Black Templars.’

  ‘I am not going to kill you, I swear. I am Adelard,’ said the warrior, ‘sword brother of the Michaelus Crusade of the Black Templars Chapter, Adeptus Astartes, and loyal son of Rogal Dorn. You have nothing to fear. We are brothers, you and I. Warriors in the never-ending war. Come with me, and be safe.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Daemongate

 
IMPERIAL GOVERNOR’S PALACE, MAGOR’S SEAT

  GERATOMRO

  087798.M41

  Dostain’s wedding and coronation passed in a blur. It was certain the wine was of no normal vintage, but he did not care. It heightened his senses and dulled something important inside his mind. Upon his throne, he indulged in heroic acts of gluttony while his court threw off its inhibitions and sank into sybaritic indulgence. Coy whispers became discreet liaisons. Laughter rang out from every corner. They sipped wine to begin with, but only to begin with. Soon they were guzzling it, and cavorting openly with one another and the servants of the Space Marines, dancing, singing, feasting and shouting, until all in the hall were drawn into a grand display of excess. Trastoon cheered to see such abandon. Dib wandered the hall, fingers trailing along backs, whispering things into ears that either horrified or delighted them.

  Music struck up. Drums beat out a rhythm to quicken the oldest heart, flutes played unearthly melodies. The beat became wilder as the wine flowed quicker.

  There were moments when Dostain’s attention shifted somehow, and he saw scenes of bloodshed and horror. Faces stained red with vitae, the flesh of living victims consumed by laughing courtiers, and the music became screams torn from the throats of tortured men. At those moments, the servants of the Emperor’s Children took on a different form, and the golden cauldron they served their wine from became a hideous creature that mewled in agony. Then he would blink, and he would see none of this, just unrestrained revelry as practised in the old days of Geratomro. Unease would linger a few moments, soon to fade under a sense of triumph and joy as he took another sip of the delightful wine.

  ‘How wonderful,’ said Pollein leadenly. Trastoon massaged the back of her neck possessively. Dostain thought this odd one moment, and not at all the next.

  The evening wore on. Dostain’s sense of time collapsed like a shattered mirror. Temporality became flashing images falling past his mind’s eye without any sense of order or relative importance. The tiny sounds of cutlery on plates or the glint of candlelight on a diamond facet of the chandeliers had as much weight as the loudest horn or the most beautiful woman. Trastoon’s face became the only constant. Always he was by his side, scrutinising him, as if there were some meat Dostain might provide to satisfy an unknowable hunger. The new governor’s pleasure was shot through with discomfort at this regard, though only when he groggily remembered it. All the while, the shattered impressions of the revel piled one atop the other until Dostain’s mind was overwhelmed with sensation.

  Then there was only Trastoon’s eyes, burning into his, and a short darkness fell. Only the eyes. One gold, one green.

  A strong hand lifted his head. A warm goblet was pressed to his lips.

  ‘Drink, my lord! Soon you must be away to your marriage bed. A little more sweet wine to awaken the senses.’

  ‘Whu?’ he said blearily. The girl had gone from his lap. Pollein had gone from his side. ‘Where is my wife?’ he said clumsily.

  ‘Why, she enjoys the marriage feast, my lord, as a bride in the gaze of Slaanesh should.’

  The Space Marine restricted his view to a small triangle caught in the crook of Trastoon’s elbow. Dostain could not see Pollein through this small window, and while he looked there the scene flickered back and forth from white-lit pleasure to carmine-illuminated bloodshed. Neither remained long. Both the transition between the two and what he saw in the latter made him ill, and he vomited copiously. Trastoon stepped smoothly back to prevent the vomit splashing his boots.

  ‘Oh, my lord!’ the Space Marine tutted. He nodded behind him at one of his helmeted fellows, who shoved his way roughly into the crowd. He plucked Pollein from a mass of bodies entwined in the remains of the food atop a banqueting table. The Space Marine was none too gentle, and the revellers made odd cries at the pain inflicted on them.

  ‘Why is she naked?’ he said.

  ‘What was that, my lord?’ asked Trastoon.

  ‘She has no clothes. Why?’

  ‘How will she love you otherwise?’ said Trastoon, hauling Dostain from his chair and carrying him like a child in his arms. ‘They are ready,’ said Trastoon to his brother, who had Pollein slung over one shoulder.

  Dostain snuggled into the hard armour of the warrior. His misgivings gave way again to satisfaction. His aunt was his, by marriage, by right. He had wanted her for so long. It was wrong to deprive someone of physical bliss.

  Next thing he knew, he was in his bed and she beside him. Surely, he thought, it should be day? But day never came, darkness reigned, and black water fell in sheets from the sky. Far away there was a rumbling noise punctuated by dazzling flashes and world-shaking booms. Her touch drove it from his mind.

  The spell upon Pollein seemed to melt away, and she came to shuddering life. Experiences were his to know that he had never expected to feel. All the while he had the impression of something vast watching him, sharing the sensations, something that seemed benevolent on the surface, but within which strong currents of evil ran.

  Dostain did not care. He did not care that Trastoon and his warrior companion stood guard by the door. He did not care that the day never came.

  ‘Pollein, Pollein!’ he cried.

  ‘Dib, Dib, Dib,’ she murmured.

  He did not care about that either. Only the feeling of her next to him. He was a lord of the world, and the lord of the woman he had long desired. No better fate could he wish for.

  Nothing lasts. At the end, they fell drunken and exhausted. Dostain’s eyes slid shut. Before he drifted into a troubled sleep, he felt Trastoon move to his side and lean down. He whispered into his ear so closely that his lips brushed his sweat-beaded skin.

  ‘And so the Prince of Pleasure rewards you for your sacrifice.’

  What sacrifice, he wondered. There was none. He had done nothing but gain. Not the way he had expected, but he had won.

  Weight shifted from the bed next to him, and he passed out.

  Dostain awoke alone. He stank of excess, of vomit, of sweat and of stale wine. His head throbbed with intolerable pain. He sat gingerly at first, then threw back the covers and rose in a panic at what he saw.

  His room was in disorder, all his furniture upended, the curtains torn down, his wash-bowl and mirrors smashed. The lumens were out, and as he groped around for a source of light, he trod on jagged glass, injuring his feet. His own cries sickened him, and he was forced to lean against one of his dressers, whose drawers had all been ripped out and their contents scattered. He found a mismatched pair of slippers and pulled them on, moaning at the swimming of his head as he bent over.

  ‘What happened?’ he croaked. ‘Pollein?’

  He knew what he was going to find before he turned back to the bed.

  The sheets were twisted up into damp knots, bloodstained and wine-soaked. He shuffled towards it. Every breath acted as a pump to force the acid up from his stomach into his gullet. What was left in his gut roiled. His breath stank, his nostrils felt hot and dry when he breathed. His forehead too was overly hot, and free of sweat. He had a terrible thirst, but his ewers of water had been upset, spilling their contents upon the marble floor. Rarely had he paid so badly for a night’s indulgence.

  ‘Pollein?’ he said in a small voice. She was nowhere to be seen. He roamed pathetically to all four corners of his large chamber searching for her, his feet crunching on broken ceramics and glass. He went to the small garderobe behind its folding screen. There was a tap there. He turned it on and sucked greedily at the water pouring from it until a foul taste polluted it, and he yanked his head back, spitting mightily.

  The tap sputtered bloody filth into the basin. With a shaking hand, he shut it off.

  The water he had managed to drink sat uneasily in his stomach, but he forced himself to hold it down. He gave an acid burp. Outside it was still dark, and though the rain had eased it had not stopped. A st
range glow shone from the sky, shifting and green as polar aurorae. That rumbling he had heard the night before was closer, and now he was sober he recognised it for weapons fire.

  He called his servants. None came. Fighting down nausea, he threw on the first clothes he could find, and abandoned his wrecked chamber for the darkness of his palace.

  No one answered his calls. He went looking in servants’ chambers and the quarters of the lords and ladies who lodged at the palace. Each one was turned over as his had been. In many were traces of blood, smeared handprints on the walls, pools of it glinting darkly in the corners. The first he encountered he slipped in, barely avoiding a fall. There was a heavy scent in every room, the perfume of the night before mixed with the stink of blood and sweat. These smells the perfume accentuated rather than masked, and in the worst rooms he had to cover his face. He wished he had a weapon.

  All the while the sound of cannon fire grew closer. He could not yet hear the sound of small arms, but he felt in his gut that it would not be long. Anguish clawed at him. Where were his new allies?

  It was not long before he found the first of the bodies. A man, lying on his back. His robes and gut had been slit open, the stomach emptied out so that there was a bloody cavity where his organs had once nestled. There was a look of bliss on his open-eyed face. His dead stare troubled Dostain so that he knelt and closed the man’s eyes.