He did. And Cyneric was waiting, a bolter in his remaining hand. The mutilated Lion reached up for it, clutching it one-handed in a pistol grip, and aimed it up as he lay back in the sludge.
I dropped back. Not completely, but enough to pull the chain tighter, adding my weight to my strength, and wrenching the beast’s head back to bare its throat.
I heard the bolter sing once, and the kick of something heavy striking near the chain. With a muffled burst, the head came free, tumbling back over its shoulders and landing with me in the filth. The armoured body stood there without anything existing above its neck – still too stubborn, too strong, to fall.
First I reclaimed my maul from its fingers. Then I tossed the thing’s slack-jawed head to Ekene where he lay.
The battle continued to rage, as the men and women I had led here fought their way further down the canyon.
With ideal atmospheric conditions, it takes less than two minutes between a drop pod’s launch and the impact of planetfall. Ekene was looking up at the darkening sky. I did not need to, nor did Cyneric. The Lion’s only reaction was to rise as best he could, and pull his helmet clear.
‘Help me stand. I cannot meet the High Marshal on my back.’
Cyneric and I hauled Ekene up between us. While we did so, the vox link I shared with the Imperial Guard erupted in cheers, as Lord Helbrecht blackened the sky with Templar drop pods.
Epilogue
Farewells
Three events remain to account in this personal chronicle, away from the battlefield. These were my last acts before leaving Armageddon.
The first, such as it was, took three entire days and nights. I memorised the names and regiments of every Steel Legion soldier lost at the Mannheim Gap, and etched them myself onto a pillar of black marble, erected in the courtyard of the foundations that would become – in the years after we departed – a new Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.
I wrote each of the six thousand, eight hundred and eleven names myself, etching them in gold leaf script onto the black stone.
The inscription above the names read, in simple Low Gothic:
‘Their names and deeds will be remembered, always, by the Emperor’s own sons,
And by the city they saved.
Honoured for their sacrifice,
And respected for their courage.
These words are carved by Merek Grimaldus,
Reclusiarch of the Eternal Crusade, Son of Dorn, Hero of Helsreach.’
Among the inscribed names of the fallen were General Arvaley Kurov and Captain Andrej Valatok.
The second was the farewell offered to Chapter Master Ekene Dubaku of the Celestial Lions, escorted with his surviving few warriors onto the Black Templars strike cruiser Blade of the Seventh Son, with its course plotted for the distant world Elysium.
His bionic leg clanked on the deck, and he still bore a limp, his physiology not entirely adjusted to the augmetic replacement yet. His armour was the gold war-plate of an ancient Imperial Fists champion, granted as a gift from the Eternal Crusader’s halls of memory. His cloak was that of Helbrecht’s own Sword Brethren, red on black, elegantly cast over one shoulder. I had worn one of those cloaks once, in a luckier life. For all I knew, it had been the very one Helbrecht had granted to Ekene when he forced him to take the oath of lordship over his depleted Chapter.
The honour guard ready to bid him good journey consisted of myself, Cyneric, and the High Marshal’s household knights, clad in ceremonial colours.
‘Chapter Master.’ I inclined my head in farewell. Cyneric did the same.
At Ekene’s hip, bound by a chain of black iron, was the flayed, polished skull of the greenskin warlord we had killed together. My name rune was etched into the bone, as was Cyneric’s, alongside Ekene’s own mark. An honour indeed, to be named on a Chapter Master’s prime trophy.
‘It should feel petty,’ he remarked, his dark face showing a smile, ‘to take such overwhelming vengeance on the site that killed my brothers. But it does not. Thank you, both of you.’
Cyneric’s skull helm dipped in further acknowledgement, but he said nothing. I could not resist a last lecture.
‘Vengeance is never petty, Chapter Master. It does, however, sometimes serve better to strike with the aid of trusted brothers.’
He made the crusader’s cross. ‘I will remember that.’
I hope most fervently, as time passes, that his efforts in reconstructing the Celestial Lions and training the generation to follow him are going well.
We will never meet again. Ekene is sworn to a life of defending what he can hold, and the Black Templars always sail forth to attack.
The third and final event worthy of chronicling came in the very last hour before the Eternal Crusader departed Armageddon’s orbit. I was alone in the Chamber of the First Proclamation, leaning on the guardrail before the great window overlooking the burning, wretched, priceless world beneath.
Bootsteps from behind did not draw my attention. Not until I realised there were two sets of them, and only one was twinned with the whirr of active battle armour.
I turned, to see Cyneric escorting a human, who walked with his hands in his pockets. Humans did not come here. I could not recall the last time one had walked this hall. This one, however, seemed absolutely unimpressed, staring not at the relics, but only at me.
‘Hey. Yes, you. I am not dead, eh? You can see this, so very plainly. Go back down there and scratch out my name, yes? I demand satisfaction in this.’
Cyneric turned to leave, abandoning me to this moment of acute discomfort now his escorting duties were done. Because of his helm, I could not tell his humour in this matter, but I suspected he was enjoying it.
I was not.
‘You were listed in the rolls of the dead,’ I said, which was perfectly true.
The slender Steel Legionary raked his fingers back through his hair, one eye narrowed in… I could not tell exactly what emotion or expression it was meant to convey. He seemed angry, or distressed, or perhaps amazed.
‘Must I sing a song or perform a dance in this museum here to convince you I am not dead?’
‘Please do not do either of those things.’
‘No? Very well. I shall scratch out my name myself. Then perhaps I can collect my pay again, eh? They cease monthly credit wages once you are registered deceased, you know? Now I have a heroic name and no money. Your brother Cyneric brought me to you. He tells me you will fix this.’
The ship shivered underneath us.
Andrej’s eyes went wide.
‘No,’ he said, as if one man could simply speak a single word and shift the tide of inevitability. ‘No, no, no. The ship moves. This is unacceptable. If I fly away from the war, I will be shot as a deserter, and then I shall truly be dead. And,’ he added, looking past me at the globe below, ‘continue going unpaid.’
How could he be shot as a deserter if he was nowhere near his regiment? I did not understand the workings of his mind, and I was not sure what to say. So I said nothing.
‘Stop this ship, okay?’ He reached to adjust his goggles where they sat back on his helmet. ‘Yes. Do that, please. I am apologetic for my angry words.’
The Crusader gave another shudder. Dozens of decks away, thousands of slaves were feeding the furnaces, igniting the great power drives. We were already moving from high anchor. The stars began to drift.
‘If you run,’ I suggested, ‘you may reach a shuttle bay in time. I will vox clearance ahead of you.’
He nodded, a gleam in his eyes, beginning to back away towards the door. ‘Yes. Clearance. That will be good, eh? Where is the closest shuttle bay?’
‘Approximately two kilometres away, if you move straight down the ship’s central spinal thoroughfare.’
He hesitated, and went bloodlessly white. ‘Please be joking.’
�
��You may wish to start running, captain.’
He looked at me, shook his head in some subtle human dismissal I could not entirely gauge, and started running.
About the Author
Aaron Dembski-Bowden has written several novels for Black Library, including the Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, The Emperor’s Gift and the New York Times bestselling The First Heretic for the Horus Heresy. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his wife Katie, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Cover illustration by Imaginary Friends Studios
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