by Gav Thorpe
A patter of bare feet and silence followed, broken a dozen seconds later by a grunted cry for assistance. Sammael was at the door before he realised what he was doing.
He paused at the threshold, his instinct telling him that this was no simulation, his rational mind wary of entrapment. In the end instinct won – it had seen him survive and prosper so far.
‘Brother!’
The call came from the right. Sammael had no idea where the cell was, or the layout of the surrounding rooms and tunnels, and he simply headed towards the sound. A quiet, wordless cry took him down a corridor to the right a few metres on and then another to the left. It took some time for him to orientate himself again as it seemed he followed the sound in circles for a few minutes.
He came upon another cell, the wooden door open, the splinters of a bolt impact clear beneath the grille of the window. Just inside lay another Space Marine, his chest plastron rent open by a wicked chainsword hit. Blood spilled from the wound, too much even for the warrior’s Larraman cells to staunch. He flailed an arm towards Sammael, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
The wound was real and Sammael’s doubts about the veracity of the emergency disappeared in an instant.
‘No time. Took my pistol.’ The Space Marine’s arm flopped to the left, pointing down a long corridor. ‘Heading towards the Exactatory.’
Sammael had no idea what or where the Exactatory was, but the wounded Space Marine’s vehemence made him certain it would not go well if the escaped Fallen reached it. The Black Knight pulled off his robe and tore a strip from the hem. Using this as a bandage, he pushed the rest of the garment into the armour breach, plugging the wound, and bound it into place.
The Deathwing Knight’s chainsword lay just out of his reach. Sammael picked it up and tested the motor. It was still working.
He had a weapon, but no armour. Not much use against a well-aimed bolt-round, but better than nothing at all. It was impossible not to feel a little trepidation at the thought of cornering a dangerous, armed foe with no protection, but he quelled the sensation. Doing so brought back another memory of Kapua.
The Titan seemed even larger than before, its carapace clearly visible over the intervening buildings, the miasma of the void shields extending higher still.
The shields flared and crackled from impacts as elements of the Ravenwing unleashed plasma and missiles and shells at the enormous war engine, but the energy field generators held firm, protecting the daemon machine from harm.
It did not matter; the assault was simply a diversion to allow Sammael and his Black Knights to close within the void shields, from where they would unleash plasma blasts and armour-piercing grenades. A trio of attack bikes with multi-meltas followed thirty metres behind the command squadron, ready to finish the task.
Sammael had faced many foes, and he trusted the judgement of his superior as much as he trusted the artifice of the armourers who had forged his war-plate and maintained Withermare. Yet looking up at the half-daemonic behemoth gave Sammael pause. All the armour in the world would not stop the beam of a turbo-laser. He felt like a gnat going up against a First Company Terminator.
The Titan’s war sirens blared again as it swept its energy-wreathed fist towards a Land Speeder, trying to swat it like a fly. The pilot was too good, dodging the attack even as the gunner continued to rain fire onto the Titan from the skimmer’s assault cannon.
The enemy had too much faith in the power of their totemic war machine. Although it was capable of destroying super heavy tanks and levelling buildings, it was just one machine, and its size restricted it to the widest plazas and thoroughfares. As much as the Ravenwing were best suited to city fighting, the Titan needed infantry support even more, to watch its back against an attack just like the one led by Gideon.
None of which made Sammael feel better about riding full speed towards the ancient colossus with nothing more than speed and skill to protect against attack. He checked again that the plasma talons were charged and activated the targeter to lock on to the huge war engine.
The Titan started to turn.
Sammael watched as the ponderous machine’s torso started to swing towards them over the roofs, and a few seconds later a foot crashed through the corner of a building. The cumbersome movements were slowed further in the Black Knight’s perception as the baleful eyes of the daemon-possessed machine glared down at the approaching bikers.
With similarly tortuous slowness, the gatling cannon swivelled on its mount.
‘Grand Master!’ Redevere barked the warning but there was no response.
‘Master Gideon, we have been detected’ said Sammael. ‘Evasive manoeuvres?’
‘Full attack speed. It can’t target us at full speed,’ the Grand Master replied calmly.
The Titan was less than three hundred metres away now. Sammael accelerated, keeping pace as Gideon’s jetbike flashed along the boulevard towards their target.
Two hundred metres.
‘We’ll be inside the minimum ra–’ Gideon’s words were lost in the roar of the gatling cannon.
Shells the size of groundcars slammed into the boulevard and surrounding buildings, one every half a second, tearing up massive chunks of ferrocrete, pulverising plastek, twisting metal supports. Fire engulfed Sammael as a shell detonated just ahead, lifting Withermare twenty metres into the air.
For a moment he felt weightless as the force of the explosion and gravity equalised. In the cloud of debris he could see other riders and mounts spinning through the dust and fire. Taking a breath, Sammael plummeted groundwards and a second later Space Marine and steed slammed into the shattered surface of the road.
Sammael survived the impact, head ringing, and watched as the fusillade continued, pounding across the neighbouring streets, driving back the rest of the Ravenwing attack. The blur of shells against the cloudy sky came closer again, hammering into a five-storey habplex to Sammael’s right. Billowing smoke and rockcrete grit, the front of the building sheared away.
The last thing Sammael saw was the Titan, turning away to confront the rest of the company, moments before the wall of masonry obscured everything and buried him in a welter of grinding shards and thunder.
Sammael had tracked the Fallen enough times that he had a sense for the Hunt. The dungeons of the Rock were an unknown labyrinth but the Black Knight headed in the direction indicated by the wounded Space Marine. There were signs that he was on the right trail: doors broken open, droplets of blood on the floor from an injury the escaped prisoner must have suffered in his duel with the Deathwing Knight and the distant pad of feet echoing down the corridors.
It seemed like an age had passed, and many kilometres, since Sammael had first left his cell, and although the Rock was large and he had ascended and descended several levels, something did not feel right. He wondered if his prey was a psyker, subtly manipulating his perception of time or distance.
This thought brought a strange stab of reality. Or rather a hyper-reality, as though acknowledging the possibility of psychic attack increasing the defences that had been implanted in his mind by the Librarians and the Chaplains. Everything suddenly appeared clean-edged, as if Sammael had pushed through a fog.
He could hear laboured breathing, still some distance away. His own breathing was slow and regular, like his heartbeat, showing none of the exertion or stress he had undergone since the interview had begun. The calm of the hunter had claimed Sammael, focusing body and mind onto a lone objective: capturing the escaped Fallen.
Sammael stopped, alert to danger, and thought back over what he had seen in the previous minutes. He had never been in this part of the Rock, as far as he knew, not even when escorting a prisoner to the handover with the Deathwing. Yet despite this there was something familiar about his surroundings. Sammael realised that he was still being manipulated.
The cross-roads of corridor
s he was in had smooth stone walls, mortared, the floor lined with pitted flagstones. It reminded him of the chambers higher up in the Tower of Angels. More specifically, he seemed to be in the passageways outside the Reclusiam. And the tunnel he had just run down a few moments before, metal grilles underfoot, ferrocrete bulkheads, that had been aboard a starship. And before that, the earthy smell of the caves of Glodinium where he had fought orks four decades earlier.
Everywhere had been pieced together out of fragments of his memories.
Had he moved at all since leaving the wounded Deathwing Knight? Was the psychic attack because he was close to his foe? Sammael raised the chainsword, thumb lightly touching the ignition stud.
The air wavered and parted like a pair of curtains, revealing the dry, roughly hewn stone of the Rock. There was a cell door just ahead, letting out the flickering light of candles onto the uneven tunnel floor. A shadow briefly eclipsed them and Sammael heard the flap of bare feet. He padded forward, weapon at the ready.
Reaching the door, he looked into the cell. There was a bulky figure hunched over in the corner, wearing a tattered Chapter robe. Bone-white, the colour of the Deathwing. The Space Marine stood up and turned to look at Sammael, chainsword in one hand, bolt pistol in the other.
He had the face of Sergeant Belial, one of the Deathwing Knights and long-time duelling opponent.
‘You can never best me,’ Belial sneered, saluting with the chainsword. ‘You are a lesser warrior.’
‘You can never best me,’ Belial said solemnly, raising the training blade to the salute. He did not seem to take pleasure in the lecture, but felt compelled to pass on the lesson. ‘You hope that a moment of genius will best a more efficient, superior swordsman.’
‘It takes only a moment to win,’ replied Sammael, replicating the salute.
Around them the rest of the Tenth watched. The honour of being this year’s Company Seneschal, the Scout Blademaster, was to be decided again. Belial had held it for the last six years, and Sammael had been the defeated finalist for the last three. Before Belial’s arrival, Sammael had been Blademaster for seven years.
The two of them lowered their weapons to the guard and started to circle, eyes fixed on each other. Sammael darted a feint towards Belial’s right shoulder and then straightened his blade, aiming for the throat. Belial batted aside the thrust with the flat of his sword and stepped back, waiting for the next attack.
Sammael checked his next lunge as he moved his weight forward, but Belial would not be baited. Sammael stepped to the right, lowered his left shoulder and then turned sharply back, slashing his sword at Belial’s knee. The other Dark Angel’s sword was there to meet the attack, easily blocking the blow. Some might say it was with contemptuous ease, but there was nothing but respect and sincerity in Belial’s expression as he parried yet another attack, eyes focused on the tip of Sammael’s sword.
Gritting his teeth, Sammael forced himself to hold back, trying to tempt Belial into the offensive. Sammael was convinced he had the greater hand speed, and would win if he could draw his foe into an attack-parry-riposte sequence, but Belial was ever precise in his movements and tactics, never over-extending himself. It was as infuriating as it was successful.
Sammael let his guard drop for a moment, leaving an opening to his left side, ready to dodge should Belial make the attack, but his foe still would not take up the offensive stance.
‘You are too good to leave such opportunity by chance,’ Belial said quietly. ‘Unlike many, I will never underestimate you.’
‘Dull,’ snapped Sammael, launching a blistering series of strikes towards the head and chest, forcing Belial back step by step to the edge of the circle. ‘Dull, dull, dull! You have no élan, brother!’
‘And you have no patience,’ said Belial, slipping aside from Sammael’s last strike, the edge of his practice blade scoring a red welt across Sammael’s left cheek, nearly breaking the bone.
Sammael staggered back, blood filling his mouth. His anger flared, directed not at Belial but himself.
Though his pride was hurt, Sammael raised his blade in salute.
‘You are the Blademaster once again, brother.’ The loss hurt more than Sammael’s jaw, but there was form to be observed. ‘I am again my own worst foe. But the honour is well-deserved.’
‘Too much show,’ Belial told him, returning the salute. ‘Always looking for the glorious victory, risking defeat in doing so.’
The memory had been more than simple recollection. It felt as though he relived the duel with Belial, and every other duel fought between the two Space Marines. Coming back to his senses, Sammael found himself alone in the cell and wondered why the Fallen who had taken the face of Belial had not killed him.
He still had the chainsword and concluded that the vision of Belial had been a phantasm, conjured in his mind by the renegade, rather than a glamour upon the Fallen himself. Sammael was no expert in psychic matters, but as a Black Knight he had learnt enough to understand the wiles of the Librarians that had turned against the Emperor and the Lion. The escapee had to be close at hand to use that kind of mind-altering power, perhaps even within sight, and that gave Sammael confidence. His prey was getting desperate, his power weakening through use or his injury.
Leaving the cell, Sammael followed the trail of blood droplets to the left, past several tall archways, heading up a spiral stair to the level above. His prey must have gleaned something of the dungeons and the upper levels from the mind of the wounded Deathwing Space Marine, and the further the Fallen ascended the closer he came to the Tower of Angels. Although this brought the fugitive nearer capture Sammael could not avoid thinking about the consequences of a Fallen Angel running loose in the Chapter monastery.
Most of the Chapter was, as usual, away on deployment at various warzones nearby, but there were still several dozen battle-brothers in the Tower of Angels, Space Marines that had not been brought into the smaller cadre of warriors that knew the truth about the Dark Angels’ ancient history. If the Fallen confronted them it would cause untold harm, perhaps irreparable damage to the cohesion of the Chapter. The Dark Angels survived only by considered introduction to the Hunt and the true nature of the Chapter’s fight during the Horus Heresy. Should the bulk of the battle-brothers learn that truth, should they be aware of the deception that had cloaked their learning since they had been brought to the Tower of Angels, it would finish the Chapter.
Spurred by this terrible thought, Sammael broke into a run, sensing that he was close on the heels of his prey. Along another corridor and down another flight of steps, the chase brought him onto a balcony above a large space where several passageways joined.
The far end of the balcony was blocked by a wooden door, which was being subjected to heavy chainsword blows by a semi-naked figure. Wary of being tricked again, Sammael dashed in to the attack, seeking to land his first blow before his target knew of the danger.
Some sixth sense warned the Fallen, who spun around, chainsword locking teeth with Sammael’s weapon in a clash of sparks and screeching metal. The parry threw Sammael back a step, but he lunged again, driving the whirring chainsword at his opponent’s gut. This attack was also turned aside, and it was only as he raised his weapon for another strike that Sammael looked at his foe’s face.
He stared into the dead gaze of Gideon.
‘You were not worthy,’ the former Grand Master told him, skin peeling from his bones, a maggot chewing its way out of a bloodless eye. ‘But for the happenstance of survival, another would have been leader.’
‘Not true,’ Sammael snarled, slashing his blade at the impostor’s throat. Gideon turned the clumsy blow aside and counter-attacked, swiping at Sammael’s chest and shoulders, forcing him to retreat along the balcony. Even though he knew it was a false apparition, Sammael could not help but think he was fighting the shade of his dead mentor.
Sammael saw that i
t was not a chainsword his opponent wielded but the fabled Raven Sword: the badge of the Ravenwing Grand Master.
The air was choked with dust and smoke and the afterwash of heat from the detonations was causing havoc with Sammael’s autosenses. At first he thought he had been buried completely, but as the smog started to drift, he saw that only his legs were pinned by a cracked stanchion that had fallen across the road. A few metres away another fractured buttress lay over the crumpled remains of Withermare. Leaking coolant had frosted the rubble around the crushed motorbike, making it appear as though the machine had been flattened by the club of a mythical frost giant. A little further away, patches of lubricant burned with green flame, adding to the sensation of the otherworldly.
Two buildings had collapsed almost in their entirety and the roadway was pocked with twenty metre wide craters from the gatling cannon impacts. The charge chamber of a plasma talon had detonated not far away, turning the surrounding ruin into a glassy molten splash. The beams of the turbo-laser flashed across the reflected surface, reminding Sammael that the Titan was not far away.
An internal sweep of his armour’s systems confirmed that the damage was light and Sammael was able to kick away the tangle of broken masonry and plasteel struts without much effort. He pushed himself to his feet and the full import of what had happened struck him.
There were broken mounts and riders scattered across the roadway, some almost completely buried, others smashed to pieces by direct shell hits. He adjusted his vox to a company-wide channel and a flood of disheartening reports crackled through the ether to his ear. The Titan had repulsed the initial attack with ease and left the company scattered again, individual squadrons doing their best to elude the enemy. Heavier vehicles were pressing from the perimeter and, along with the Titan, dominating the open spaces and wider roads. This had forced many of his company brothers into the narrower streets and alleys, where enemy cultists were able to use the dense terrain and their numbers for effective ambushes.