Blood and Fire

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  Mordred doesn’t reply. He holds out his hand, waiting with insane, silent patience as the world falls down around them.

  ‘That is all?’ asked Ekene. The Lions were all watching me.

  ‘That was how the battle ended.’

  ‘So you earned the skull-smile through valour.’

  I did not know the answer, myself. Mordred had always ignored the question when I had asked it, considering it meaningless. The result matters, he always replied, not the decisions made to reach it.

  ‘I was one of the last still standing at the gate. I was the first to sense the change within Vinculus, and act with Mordred. I guarded my liege lord’s life with the Chaplain’s weapon, and pulled Ludoldus back from the chasm’s edge.’

  ‘Those acts look fine on a roll of honour,’ Ekene said. The Pride Leader was no fool. He could tell I was holding something back. ‘But I sense there is more.’

  ‘There is,’ I admitted. ‘Nothing of drama and heroism. Just a moment of curiosity I have never been able to set aside.’

  Only two gunships remain.

  The first rises on protesting engines, whining for altitude as the boulders fall. One moment it lifts from the crumbling ground, landing gear folding closed in a clanking chorus of technology – the next it detonates in a heartsick flash of promethium fuel. Its wreckage, crushed beneath a toppled pillar, gives an animal-corpse twitch as its engines die.

  The last gunship breathes lung-burning jet wash as it begins its own rise. The last knights run and leap for the gangramp, hauled up by their waiting brothers.

  ‘The void,’ orders Ludoldus, breathing heavily with his back to the cargo bay wall. ‘Get us into the void, Artarion.’ The pilot voxes acknowledgement as the Thunderhawk climbs higher.

  ‘Grimaldus.’ The High Marshal rests back next to Mordred, his weathered features in stark contrast to the Chaplain’s cadaverous faceplate.

  ‘Sire?’ Grimaldus replies.

  ‘You are the last of my knights still wearing a red cloak.’

  For a moment, the knight hesitates, almost arguing that it cannot be true. But he stood with the High Marshal watching the survivors evacuate, unwilling to leave the field of battle before his men and their allies. He saw no other Sword Brothers among the living.

  ‘That may be true, sire.’

  ‘It is true.’ Ludoldus turns to Mordred. ‘I told you fate favoured him, did I not?’

  Mordred says nothing, just staring with that skullish grin.

  The Lions nodded among themselves, sharing smiles.

  ‘Not just valour, then,’ Ekene ventured. ‘Luck, as well. You were marked out from your brothers by fortune as well as ferocity.’

  ‘It is a possibility,’ I confessed. ‘Mordred was a mercurial soul. I have never known why he chose me.’

  ‘Or why he was told to choose you.’

  ‘Or… what?’ In all my life, I was so rarely speechless. That night, I felt my words and breath both catch in my throat.

  Why he was told to choose you. As I was told to choose Cyneric.

  ‘I meant no offence,’ Ekene replied.

  ‘None offered, and none taken.’ I almost smiled, though they would never have seen it even if I had. My faceplate – Mordred’s faceplate before it was mine – revealed nothing of emotion. ‘My tale is told, cousins.’

  ‘Not enough blood,’ one of them said, earning agreement from his brothers.

  ‘And yet another reason never to trust the weak little souls claiming inquisitor rank,’ said Ekene. That earned another few chuckles. ‘I would, however, have engaged the beast myself. Blade to claw.’

  ‘Of course,’ the other Lions join in, with good-natured growls.

  I was starting to realise the informality in their ranks was not one of ill-discipline, but unreserved brotherhood. Curious, how two Chapters from the same gene-stock can be so different. Birth world meant everything to these warriors. To the Templars, almost nothing.

  ‘So, cousins,’ I said. ‘I have paid your toll. Tell me what I wish to know. Speak of Khattar.’

  V

  Death Sentence

  ‘Khattar.’ Ekene made a curse of the name.

  ‘Khattar,’ several of the others echoed. They were unhelmed, their dark faces bronzed by the flames. As rank and file troopers, they seemed reluctant to look at me for long. I caught them making occasional glances in my direction, at my tabard, heraldry, or the polished silver of my skull faceplate.

  ‘That was no war,’ one of them said.

  ‘Nothing but a slaughter,’ chimed another, from the other side of the fire. Their way of retelling tales seemed be almost ritualistic. Every voice was equal. Everyone’s story mattered.

  Ekene was leading the storytelling gathering. ‘I was never present at meetings of Chapter command,’ he said. ‘But I was there. I was on Khattar.’

  ‘I was there,’ the others chorused, in their low voices.

  Around us, Lions patrolled between the hulls of the few remaining tanks left to the Chapter. The vehicles were worn down by gunfire, with smoke taint darkening their cerulean paintwork. Ekene and his brothers could have been spirits themselves, drifting among the memories of their dead Chapter.

  ‘Khattar was a world of priests and preachers,’ he began. ‘Of followers and the faithful.’

  ‘An Ecclesiarchy world,’ I said. They did not regard it as interruption. Most of them nodded, and Ekene smiled.

  ‘As you say, Reclusiarch. A world in thrall to the ivory tower priests of the Imperial Creed.’

  ‘But it soured,’ one of the others added. From the scrollwork on his shoulderguard, the warrior’s name was Jehanu. He looked young, scarcely out of his Scout trials. Space Marines show their age in their scars.

  ‘Their faith rotted on the vine,’ Jehanu said. ‘And they called for us.’

  ‘The priesthood fell into deviancy,’ Ekene took over, ‘as so many do, in so many of our tales in this Final Age of Man. They prayed to the Gods behind the Veil, and their dark untruths carried the faithful masses away from the Emperor’s light, spreading to the highest echelons and furthest reaches.’

  Jehanu interjected again. ‘You ask what could those priests have chanted to poison the souls of a whole world?’

  Were the Lions mission briefings relayed in the same warrior-

  by-warrior retelling of facts? A curious custom.

  ‘Blasphemy,’ said another Lion with an amused snort. ‘Blasphemy and lies, compelling enough to sound like truth to a society weary of their prayers going unanswered.’

  The Lions nodded. I wondered how true that was, across the galaxy. The Emperor was immortal and mighty beyond reckoning. But he was no god. Mankind – in its blessed ignorance – worshipped him as one.

  Yet false gods cannot answer prayers. How tempting it must seem to those sects and societies far from Terra to seek other answers when pleading with the Emperor brings only silence.

  ‘Where were the world’s defenders, I hear you ask?’ Ekene showed his teeth in a feral shadow of a smile. ‘The planetary defence forces did not rise up to purge the revolt. They joined it. And more were still to come: Imperial Guard regiments in nearby systems did the same – such was the ferocity of Khattar’s blasphemy.’

  ‘Apollyon,’ Jehanu spoke up again. ‘Apollyon was the inquisitor who pleaded for our support, for his efforts to crush the faithless lies had met with failure after failure.’

  Ekene stared into the fire as he agreed. I could see the sparks of memories in his eyes. ‘He had a Naval blockade, but nothing in the way of surface troops. So in the wake of his failure, we made planetfall in full force. Hundreds of us, Reclusiarch. We rained holy fire, sacred iron and true faith on a world that had forgotten the taste of all three.’

  ‘Slaughter followed,’ said Jehanu.<
br />
  ‘What chance did they have?’ another Lion, Ashaki, put forth. ‘They were mere men, following the lies of false prophets. We destroyed them.’

  ‘All of them,’ Jehanu grinned. ‘Every man and woman with a weapon in their hands.’

  Ekene took over once more. ‘We quenched the rebellion in a matter of weeks. No armies existed once we were finished with Khattar, not even a town militia. Nowhere on that world did a single priest still draw breath. With the armed resistance annihilated, we returned to our ships. Whatever heresy lingered among the defenceless population was under the eyes of others now – no longer a matter for bolters and blades.’

  Jehanu barked a nasty laugh. ‘Such faith in our allies, we had that day.’

  ‘As with any cleansing,’ Ekene continued, ‘we expected preachers of the Creed to take over, shepherding the lost populace back to enlightenment.’

  Ekene had been cleaning his bolter. Now he lay it aside, looking back into the fire. ‘It took several days to recover our materiel, honour our dead, and prepare to leave. Apollyon’s underlings worked on the world below, assessing the population of eight billion for signs of further deviancy. We were scarcely out of orbit when Apollyon’s warship opened fire on the world below. The rest of the Imperial Navy blockade fired with him, targeting cities and population centres.’

  ‘We watched them,’ said Ashaki, ‘spitting fire onto the world we had just bled to cleanse of corruption. Our honour burned with those cities. Every shot we had fired, betrayed as a waste.’

  I remained silent, waiting for the rest.

  ‘Our lords demanded the blockade cease fire and answer for its actions,’ Ashaki spat into the fire. ‘Apollyon claimed he had determined the entire population tainted beyond salvation. He even thanked us for our “worthy efforts, though they were in vain”.’

  ‘An hour later,’ said Jehanu, ‘Khattar’s cities were dust.’

  I took a slow breath, shaping the words to suit my reply. ‘It is possible that he was astute in his observations. Heresy had clearly taken root through Khattar’s society. Perhaps it had wormed as deep as Apollyon claimed.’

  The Lions bristled. I could tell they ached to show their anger, but the skull helm I wore stayed their hands. That, and the fact I could kill any one of them without breathing hard.

  Ashaki was the one to speak. ‘Are you saying he was capable of determining the taint running through several billion souls in a handful of days?’

  ‘No. I am saying nothing more than the fact it has taken me a single heartbeat to see corruption in the minds of men before, and a man in Apollyon’s position can afford no chances.’

  ‘You stand with him?’ Ekene was growling now.

  Words came to me in that moment, Mordred’s words. I could have merely opened my mouth and spoken them for him, as surely as if he were still alive, still telling me what to think and who to kill.

  The innocent will always die when the guilty are punished. Is that wrong? By what scale of virtue do we judge morality? This is life. This is duty. This is necessity. We mourn the innocents lying in mass graves with the guilty, and we move on. The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Imperium.

  I said none of this, though it was as true as anything else. Ekene took my silence as disregard.

  ‘You believe he was justified?’ the Lion almost snarled the words. ‘That he slaughtered billions of men, women and children on the chance they were all tainted, and it is our place to ignore it?’

  Before Helsreach, yes, I would have said exactly that. But no longer. Balance, I thought. Balance between wrath and wisdom. I looked at him, still saying nothing. He seemed to recall to whom he was speaking, and nodded a subtle apology.

  ‘Calm your spite, Ekene, for it is meaningless here. Apollyon acted within the rights granted by his rank; he did as many of his Inquisitorial kindred would do. He also did as many Chapter Masters would have done. That does not make it wise, or right, or virtuous. It merely makes it real.’

  ‘It makes it an effort to hide some filthy secret,’ Jehanu insisted, and his brothers nodded. ‘The tale reeks of a man seeking to hide some grievous error, does it not?’

  ‘Perhaps. But if he had so much to hide, why summon a Space Marine Chapter? Perhaps Apollyon was merely a hasty fool to whom life meant little, and that mournful truth is one we have to live with. He is hardly the first man of exalted rank to decay in a position of power.’

  ‘You are as cold as any Deathspeaker,’ Ekene said, but the anger was bleeding from his words.

  Cold-blooded off the battlefield, hot-blooded upon it. This is your place. More of Mordred’s words.

  ‘I will not pass judgement on a moment I never saw, between men I do not know. That is not my place. I judge my brothers – their actions and their souls – not the pathetic intricacies of Imperial Law. Tell me what came next. Did you fire on his fleet?’

  Ekene shook his head. ‘No, never. Chapter Command sent word throughout the subsector, warning all Imperial outposts and regional governors what had occurred and decrying the actions of the Inquisition. Word was also sent directly to Terra – a delegation of Deathspeakers and Warleaders chosen for the task, to show the gravity of the situation.’

  ‘They never reached Terra.’ I did not need to guess the fate of those well-intentioned souls. They would never set foot on the Throneworld. ‘They were never seen again.’

  ‘Oh, we saw them again,’ Jehanu said, quietly.

  ‘We found their vessel two years later,’ Ekene admitted. ‘Dead in the void, deep in greenskin space. All damage was indicative of a ruinous warp flight. No signs of weapons fire on the hull.’

  I had seen the interior of several vessels gutted by warp storms. All life torn into genetic scrap; all metal mutated and poisoned beyond salvage.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We kept demanding an investigation into the Khattar Massacre. We sent word to any Imperial officials who would listen, from planetary regents to the priest-kings of Ecclesiarchy worlds. If any such investigation took place, it remained a mystery to us. Armageddon called, and we answered. Which brings us… here.’

  Jehanu gestured at the hollow armoury as Ekene finished. ‘They want to silence us.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Far from it.’

  The Lions looked at me, seemingly unsure if I were making some dark jest. But I was not; the Inquisition were not acting to silence the Lions, and I was certain Julkhara had known that when he reached out to me.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They are using you,’ I told the survivors around the scrap-fire. ‘They are using you to make an example. The Lions are the most recent casualty in the institution’s campaign to rein in the autonomy of the Adeptus Astartes. The Inquisition tolerates no attacks on its sovereign rights – yet you challenged them. And now all will bear witness to the price of your rebellion. The sabotages, the conflicting orders, the ambushes. A Chapter will not just suffer for defying the Inquisition and slandering its virtue. A Chapter will die in shame for it. Millions will hear of how you were killed on Armageddon. A mere handful will know the truth behind your deaths, and each of those will be Adeptus Astartes officers who will tread with much more caution when they deal with the Inquisition in the future. The lesson will be learned, just as Apollyon’s cronies wish.’

  The Lions digested this in silence. Eventually, Ekene spoke, looking into my eye-lenses.

  ‘We are going back to Mannheim,’ he said.

  I had been waiting for those words.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Many of the Gargants are gone, but it is still a well-defended stronghold. It remains a cancer of enemy presence in Volcanus’s territory, and it must fall.’

  That seemed idealistic, at best. ‘It will not fall, Ekene. Not to a handful of Lions, no matter how noble and proud.’

  He spread his hands in calm acceptance. �
��Then we will die trying.’

  Akashi leaned forward, adding his voice to his sergeant’s. ‘That is where we have chosen to die. It has to be there. Our bones shall lie alongside our brothers’.’

  Jehanu nodded. ‘Remember us, Reclusiarch.’ His voice was low, and his tone plaintive. ‘Take the truth with you when you leave this world. Spread it among the Chapters that share Dorn’s bloodline.’

  They were asking a great deal of me. If I did as they asked, it could all too easily draw the Inquisition’s ire upon the Black Templars. Even so, they should have known they had no need to ask. Of course I would do it. It was the valorous truth. I could no more hide that than I could forsake the Eternal Crusade and retire to a life of ignorant peace.

  ‘The truth will sail with me,’ I vowed. ‘And you are fools for believing it might not.’ They shared smiles again; that curious tribal brotherhood. ‘You mean to fight alone?’ I asked.

  ‘We must,’ replied Ekene. ‘Volcanus cannot spare its Guard regiments. Even with Mannheim emptied of Gargants in the weeks since the massacre – a fact we still cannot be certain is true – it is still a brutal target, rich with enemy presence. Five of our battle companies failed to take it. A few thousand Guardsmen will be nothing more than spitting into the wind.’

  Ashaki snorted in derision. ‘And we can trust none of them, anyway. The Inquisition’s talons are everywhere.’

  Ekene growled, little different from the beast that gave his Chapter its name. ‘I just want one chance to kill the warlord that devoured our dead. I will die content if I drag him to the grave with me.’

  I breathed the stale, recycled air of my suit’s internal oxygen supply. It tasted of sweat.

  ‘Mankind’s galaxy will mourn the loss of the Celestial Lions.’

  ‘Let them mourn.’ Ekene’s lip curled in disgust. ‘If this is our reward for loyal service, they are welcome to their grief.’

  Something in my demeanour must have warned him, for he continued more cautiously. ‘This is how it has to end, Deathspeaker. Let it finish in fire, not in centuries of painstaking laboratory work to preserve our bloodline. We will die as warriors.’