The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  Then Arvida remembered what he had seen on Dark Glass.

  He remembered that planet of sorcerers, and the dark tower, and the shuffling lines of robed magicians. He remembered the fractured god, his lone eye all that remained true of the creature he had once been.

  He could take them there, if the place were real. For a moment, his mind crept tentatively in that direction, seeking for a sign that the lattice extended that far.

  They will need a guide.

  Even there, amid the foundations of the infinite, there was temptation to resist.

  He collected himself, gathering all his strength, moulding the fractured facets of a thousand potential futures into a single whole. The great maze had been constructed by minds for whom Terra was an unknown backwater, a mere mark on star charts. Even now there would be no straight ways, no easy paths back into the world of the living.

  Arvida extended his future-sense, travelling further and further down the maze of possibility. As he homed in on the place where the vortex led, he saw for the first time the tumult arrayed about their destination. The link Yesugei had forged at Catullus had lacked an answering voice, and so every path to the heart of Terra was blocked, crammed with armies of the empyrean boiling up out of the profoundest pits of the abyss. The tunnels were aflame, blocking the light of the greater Throne, and some secret war raged unchecked amid the vaults of hell.

  But he could take them most of the way.

  There were portals of the labyrinth that flared out into real space before the margins of the Solar System, yet still ahead of the Warmaster’s advance. They were distant still, but the incredible speeds only grew, accelerating the entire time, making the void ships stretch and shake. If he could maintain the beacon, if he could find the path, they would yet achieve it.

  Dimly, he could sense the stink of daemon. In the world of the senses, they were fighting towards him, screaming to claw at his soul, but he could not let his concentration drop, could make no move to defend himself. For if he faltered, they all faltered.

  The walls of sorcery rushed past, glowing, racing. He heard voices raised in anger and pain. He felt the hard deck beneath, and saw the empyrean soaring above, majestic and terrible.

  Hold on, he breathed. Just a little longer.

  Hold on.

  The daemons burst through the failing Geller field, jaws wide and claws outstretched, bringing with them the frenzied chorus of damned souls.

  The Stormseers responded, hurling the tempest back at them. The first creatures of the aether were ripped asunder, their warp-wound flesh exploding in shivers of unleashed energy, but more came in their wake, shrieking and laughing.

  Jaghatai took up position by Arvida, as did Jubal and the keshig, fortifying an island before the throne. Further out across the bridge’s expanse, the warriors of the ordu opened fire, sending massed volleys of bolter-shells punching through the tides of daemonic flesh.

  The creatures of the empyrean howled, dropping to the decks and scampering into range, eyes flashing. Dozens spilled into being, then hundreds, swarming through the metal of the hull, pushing up from the deck, plunging from the vaults. They strutted on switchbacked legs and snapped with crab-clawed arms, brandishing flails and scourges with dazzling finesse. Every move they made was sheathed in a shimmering curtain of false colour, a whirl of unlight that defied mortal eyes, and they grinned from split-flesh mouths.

  Bolters hurt them, but only the weapons of eternity – blades, fists, spears – ended them. The White Scars met them in close combat, making use of all their speed, all their power. Tulwar met flail in a riot of thrusts and parries, and soon the upper levels of the bridge were locked in a crush of close-quarters struggle.

  Daemons ripped into the chests of mortals, lifting them clear of the deck and hurling them down into the pits below. The sons of Jaghatai fought back with equal savagery, cutting the glimmering flesh from the neverborn as they capered and spun.

  The Stormseers strode into the heart of the fighting, summoning more destruction, crying out Khorchin words of power. Lightning forked down, crackling with psychic force, and where it struck the daemons they burst into consuming flame. The stormwind accelerated, tearing across nav-stations and cogitator-banks, sweeping the damned and the cursed from their hoofs and sending them flailing.

  But more kept coming, ever greater in stature, more steeped in malice. Remnants of the Kakophoni lingered on in their sinuous skins – flecks of purple armour, clinging like scales to the supple flesh of the neverborn. Those hybrids opened their throats, and ear-bursting sonic horror flooded the bridge-space, shattering eardrums and bursting eyeballs. They extended their twisted arms, fused with the residue of the old guns, and loosed tsunamis of raw noise that cut up decking and pulverised columns.

  No mortal could stand against that. The ship’s crew were slain in droves, their carapace armour and helms scant protection against the overwhelming force of the daemon host, but still they held their ground, buoyed by the presence of the legionaries among them.

  The Legion’s warriors, assembled from those taken from the Swordstorm and the Lance of Heaven’s own complement, tore back into the enemy, racing to hold the strategic points. They moved in a whirl of steel, driving their bodies as hard as they had ever been driven, striving to keep up with the preternatural movements of their foes. The hard light-bursts of the zadyin arga wreathed them, slewing from their bodies as they fought, blinding the horrors and making them scream. The least of the daemons was greater than any legionary, but the ordu fought together, parrying, slicing, rushing the creatures wherever they landed and striking them down.

  As the armies clashed, their arena became deafening, a holocaust of unfettered noise and projected nightmares.

  Jaghatai was at the thick of the combat, for the denizens of the empyrean latched on to Arvida, and knew that it was he who guided the entire fleet. Like hornets, they streaked towards the sorcerer, flooding the air with killer-harmonics from splayed-wide jaws, desperate to reach him with a barbed scourge or poisoned spear-tip.

  The Stormseer Naranbaatar countered those attacks, generating a hemispheric kine-shield across the kneeling Arvida. Its shell blazed with a pure fire every time it was struck, showering cascades of refracted warp light with every impact.

  Jubal led the keshig out into the heart of the assault, and the Terminator-armoured bodyguard cut their way through ranks of racing daemon-kind, wielding their heavy glaives two-handed. Despite their massive battleplate, they matched the warp spawn for speed, weathering the horrific barrage of sound and then striking out with neon-wreathed blades.

  Every soul was engaged, every mind focused, every weapon-hand occupied, and still they came. The air became ferociously hot, shaking from the discharge of plasma-bolts and warp-magicks, and the blood boiled where it fell.

  Right at the epicentre, Jaghatai wielded his blade, injecting every stroke with fearful poise. He lashed out, catching a screaming horror in the throat, severing its horned head from its ophidian neck, then swung around and thrust the blade-tip into the entrails of its swooping counterpart. He shivered the blade, and the daemon blew apart, its severed elements spiralling across the crammed press of fighting souls.

  None could withstand the primarch. He towered above the neverborn, reaping a path through the horde, carving a way for his keshig to follow. Step by step, metre by ichor-stained metre, they drove the daemon vanguard back from Arvida. The storm-lightning snapped and lanced, skewering more even as they materialised, shredding their essence and sending it howling back into the Seethe.

  ‘Hai Chogoris!’ came the battle-roar, loosed from every legionary’s throat across the bridge, and for a moment their fury outmatched the screams of the aether.

  But then the ship buckled, falling sharply. Its last, faint residue of Geller coverage imploded, showering the bridge with a deluge of broken silver. A new and enormous shape coalesced b
efore the command throne, twisting into solidity like smoke running in reverse, blooming into lurid purple smog and then filling out into a hulking spectre of humanity’s darkest dreams.

  No trace remained of Konenos’ armour. Four pale arms thrust out from a writhing torso, two of them terminating in long crab-like claws, the other two in taloned, human-like hands. Its tapered skull, crowned with blood-red horns, was pierced and riven with ritual scars, animated by eyes with no whites. When its mouth gaped, a long violet tongue whipped out from between close-packed fangs. Its every move was achingly alluring, at once repellent and intoxicating, blurred with clouds of pungent incense.

  The daemon was immense, crashing to the deck and making the stones crack under its hooves. Thrice the height of the primarch, it was an avatar of corruption hurled into the world of the senses. Storm-lightning snapped across it, burning away in ribbons of steam as it recoiled from the unholy flesh.

  ‘Hail, son of Anathema,’ it said, and its voice contained every foul and beautiful thing within it – the howl of an infant’s terror, the cry of mortal ecstasy, the gasp of pain under the torturer’s knife. ‘You are far from home.’

  The Khan looked up, taking in the full splendour and degradation, all encompassed in the pale flesh, the shimmer of gauze, the scent of desire and abhorrence.

  ‘Bar my way, yaksha,’ he said, keeping his sacred blade in guard, ‘and I shall end you.’

  The daemon laughed, and the sound was like glass being scraped across bone.

  ‘Attempt it, and your flayed soul shall sweeten the passage of eternity.’

  Then the daemon moved, sweeping its sword down. The Khan swung his blade to parry, and the clash rang out like mountain ice breaking. Then the primarch was moving again, spinning to intercept the scything claws. His tulwar shuddered on impact, shearing a slice of daemonic chitin from the inner curve, before he thrust upwards again to lash across the grasping talons.

  Beyond the greater daemon, the battle raged unabated. Storm-magic rose up against warp-devilry in a welter of psychic detonations, punctuated by the physical combat of blade-thrust and bolter-volley. Jubal and his retinue took on the greatest of those who had followed Manushya-Rakshsasi, and the Terminator guard wrestled with psychosonic hybrids of talon and fused vox-augmitter. The Master of the Hunt roared out the name of his primarch with every one he cast back into the underverse. Namahi stayed at his side, swinging a guan dao in a glittering corona.

  None matched the perfection of the Khan in combat. Set against the mightiest denizen of the aether, matched against the most power­ful of all the gods’ sendings to the mortal plane, the primarch rose to a level of controlled fury that passed into the sublime. His sword flew, whirling faster than the plains-wind across driven grass. Every daemonic attack was thrown back and matched with a counter of his own. The two blades clashed, again and again, lost in a tornado of strike and parry, thrust and evade.

  Manushya-Rakshsasi screamed, drenching the Khan in a molecule-shaking torrent of sound, but he powered through it. Its rune-burned longsword snarled across his guard, its claws reached out, scraping across his gold-and-pearl armour, and he cast them back. All the while the tulwar hacked, cutting deep into aether-knitted sinews, making the daemon roar.

  ‘You cared much for your storm-witch, I think,’ said Manushya-Rakshsasi, pulling away from the Khan’s furious assault. ‘Do you wish me to show you his agony?’

  The primarch only pressed the attack further, driving his limbs ever harder, wielding the blade so fast now that it felt like reality would split around it. Flames kindled about both combatants, bursting into life as the weapons spun.

  The Khan could sense its limitation now. It had thrown everything at him, and still he lived. His warriors lived, and fought, and roared their defiance. The creature fed on fear, but there was nothing to feed on aboard the Lance of Heaven.

  ‘Soul-engines were not meant for your kind,’ taunted Manushya-Rakshsasi, summoning a fresh charge that nearly sent the Khan staggering. ‘They are beyond you, just as we are beyond you.’

  The Khan shoved his energy-flaming sword-tip clean through Manushya-Rakshsasi’s torso, ripping it out the far side, before the daemon’s claws raked down across his breastplate, nearly tearing it from the flesh. Blood now joined the circles of fire, mortal-red and daemon-violet.

  ‘You should never have dared this.’

  The daemon screamed again, hurling the Khan back a pace and dissolving the ground beneath his feet. It followed up with a brutal lunge with a clenched claw, catching him under the chin and forcing him back further.

  ‘This is our realm.’

  The Khan struck back instantly, slamming the daemon’s sword aside and going for the creature’s midriff. The blade thrust true, ripping another wound in the creature’s flank. Where the ichor shot through the blade’s disruptor trails it ignited, dousing both of them in rippling blood-fire.

  ‘They are all our realms. You are a plague on them, a contagion to be excised.’

  The creature’s talons raked around, and the Khan bludgeoned them away. He dragged his blade across the daemon’s leading thigh, and muscle parted with a slick shiver. Then he swept back across the daemon’s ribcage, slicing into the bone-claw.

  ‘And excised you will be.’

  Manushya-Rakshsasi kicked out with its hoof, cracking it into the Khan’s side and shattering armour-plate. The primarch went skidding, hurled out of position. The daemon screamed its contempt again, and hammered the flaming sword down. The killing edge seared through the tortured air, fizzing with serpentine magicks.

  The Khan angled his blade to parry, and the two swords crashed together. A massive clang resounded, there was a blaze of light, and the Khan’s tulwar shattered. The daemon hurled a bone-claw around, crunching the primarch aside and sending him clattering into the empty command throne.

  That exposed Arvida, still locked deep within his future-sense, unwitting, alone. The Khan sprang back to his feet and raced to close the gap. Manushya-Rakshsasi lurched towards the sorcerer, claws stretched, the lust of destruction in its narrowing eyes. The primarch, weaponless now, leapt for the daemon’s throat.

  Manushya-Rakshsasi reacted too late. The Khan grasped its neck, seizing the lilac flesh and using his momentum to drive the creature from Arvida. He pushed his gauntlets together, driving them deep into the creature’s taut skin.

  Caught by the ferocity of the lunge, Manushya-Rakshsasi was thrown off balance, crashing onto its back, and the Khan smashed down atop it, hands still clamped around its throat. The daemon arched its back, trying to throw the primarch, but the Khan, drawing on every sliver of genhanced strength, pushed down harder, snapping warp-spun bones and crushing multiple, twisted windpipes.

  Manushya-Rakshsasi choked and lashed out harder. Its sword sliced across the Khan’s back, severing armour-plates and lifting them loose. Its talons scraped across his side, puncturing muscle where his battleplate had been ripped clear. The vast creature twisted like a snake, trying to throw its tormentor off, but the Khan only pressed harder, driving his fingers into the daemon’s throat and tearing up the sinews.

  ‘There is nowhere left to hide,’ the Khan hissed, throttling the dregs of life out of the flailing daemon. ‘We know you now. We shall hunt you in every plane of reality. We shall cleanse the void, then we shall cleanse the warp.’

  Manushya-Rakshsasi spat its defiance, but the spittle was laced with ichor now, and its eyes had clouded. A shudder rippled through its ravaged frame, and the talons went limp.

  ‘So look on me now, yaksha,’ said the Khan, ‘and know your slayer.’

  The daemon dragged up a final, strangled breath, gazing up at Jaghatai with both loathing and horror. Then the primarch released his grip and seized the daemon’s own sword from its slackening grip. Taking its flaming hilt in both hands, he twisted round, pulled it back, then plunged it into Manushya-Rakshsasi�
��s chest. The daemon screamed, impaled on the burning blade. The Khan hauled the sword back out, then thrust his gauntlet deep into the gaping wound.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ he cried, ripping the daemon’s heart from between its ribs and brandishing it high above his head. Ichor as thick and dark as oil ran down his arm, steaming as it came.

  Across the bridge, the White Scars heard their master’s cry of triumph, as did the daemons, and all saw the Keeper of Secrets’ still-thudding heart held aloft. Every warrior rose up then, fighting still, their blades plunging and their fists clenched hard.

  ‘For the Khan!’ they roared.

  Then the primarch cast the daemonic heart aside and took up the shards of his tulwar, still lashing with power, and strode back into the fray. His keshig fell in around him, laying waste to all that stood before them. The Stormseers renewed their assault, tearing the elements asunder and hurling them into the oncoming ranks of neverborn. Bolters roared, battle-cries were unleashed, and the hordes of the underverse screamed in hatred and desperation.

  Amid it all, the sorcerer Arvida knelt, untouched, unharmed, driving them onwards.

  Beyond the confines of the hull, the universe thundered past, ever faster, ever further.

  ‘Fight on!’ roared the Khan.

  The daemons screamed. The White Scars met them, defiant and unbending.

  ‘Fight on!’

  Twenty-Seven

  A last great crashing lance-impact told Mortarion everything he needed to know – the Swordstorm’s shields had been broken, truly this time, and he was free to teleport clear.

  He looked down at the slain around him, each one ended by the cut of scythes, and watched the blood-trails pool and drain across the floor of the deck. They had all raced onto his blade, eager to meet it, fighting as furiously and as well as any warriors of any Legion, but there had been something more with them – a kind of mania.