Dante

by Guy Haley

  ‘We shall leave immediately. Zelger, Bozots! Get your guns and your crews.’ He spoke again to Dante, face bright with pride. ‘I will lead you out personally.’

  On reflection, Dante was glad of his guides. They took him through a tangled labyrinth of neglected passageways that would have confounded him had he attempted the trip alone. Laziel moaned every so often, but was quiescent, and Dante dared to hope.

  In half an hour they stood in the antechamber to an airlock leading outside. Segelyes looked at it thoughtfully.

  ‘I have never seen beyond this place.’

  ‘You would need breathing apparatus to survive outside,’ said Dante. ‘The air is thin so far above your world’s seas.’

  Segelyes nodded. ‘So it is said. It is good to know for certain.’

  Dante glanced at Laziel, who was slumped against the wall.

  ‘You must go.’

  Segelyes’ men gathered up their guns. The sentry at the door held up a hand. The rest fell instantly silent.

  ‘Bootsteps,’ he said. ‘Heavy. Adeptus Astartes.’

  ‘Your brethren?’ asked Segelyes.

  Dante shook his head. He unslung his boltgun and moved alongside the sentry.

  The burning glow of helm lenses shone down the passageway. A bolt-round slammed into the wall by the door and exploded.

  ‘The Purge!’ he shouted. He fired back. They were trapped. The civilians would be slaughtered. Segelyes’ men were prising cabinets from the walls and taking shelter behind them. Such barricades would be next to useless against mass-reactives, and the militia would last seconds in combat with renegades.

  Dante’s fury rose. So close, and here innocent men would lose their lives because of him. He emptied his boltgun, filling the approach to the antechamber with streaking micromissiles. They exploded loudly around his enemy. One gave out a metallic cry and fell dead. They retreated a step.

  ‘Are they falling back?’ asked the sentry. More men joined them around the door.

  ‘Get back!’ said Dante. Too late. A rocket streaked down the corridor, exploding on the outside of the door. Dante was flung backwards. He slammed down and tumbled over, crushing a man under the weight of his armour.

  The men who had guarded the door with him were splashed all around the entrance. The smell of burned meat and blood flooded Dante’s nostrils. He tried to seal his helm, but it was malfunctioning. His ears rang. He glanced round at scared faces, at men firing guns that could not hope to penetrate Space Marine armour. They had come there for him, to aid him and his brother.

  Figures moved down the corridor.

  Unreasoning fury overpowered Dante’s reason. He surged to his feet, sword in hand, and ran howling at The Purge. Bolt-rounds blew all over his armour. The insistent peeping of warning runes became a clamour. He crashed into the traitors, sword hewing the first down. His bolt pistol ended the next. Knives jabbed at him, hammered by transhuman strength into the ceramite of his battleplate. Swords bounced from his pauldrons. Hands grappled with him, but Dante could not be stopped. He slew them, smashing their treacherous bodies down. His helmet was wrenched away, and his senses were flooded with blood – its colour, its smell. His rage built until he was a killing machine. From there it was a short step to a warm, wet world, rich with the scent of iron. The thing that was Dante receded, leaving an unguided weapon in its stead. His last foe fell, and he pounded back into the antechamber.

  ‘Lord Dante?’ asked Segelyes. He took a step backwards, horrified by the bloodshot eyes and extended fangs of the Blood Angel.

  Howling incoherently, Dante attacked. The world became a confusion of screams and hot, red blood pouring down his throat.

  There was a flash of gold. A mightier angel than he stood before him. With a single blow the Sanguinor sent him reeling backwards. A second banished him deep into unconsciousness.

  ‘Dante? Brother Dante? Can you hear me?’

  A bright light flashed in his eyes.

  ‘He’s awake, captain.’

  ‘Is he cogent?’

  ‘Captain Avernis?’ said Dante. ‘Where am I?’

  It took a moment for Dante to place himself in the airlock adjoining the antechamber. His brothers stood around him, weapons ready. Both interior and exterior doors were open. A Stormhawk hovered in the dirty sky outside. A humid decompression wind blew out from the hive.

  ‘The Purge,’ said Dante.

  ‘You killed them all,’ said Avernis. ‘Six of them, by yourself. Impressive. You display the Warrior’s Virtues strongly.’

  Dante got to his feet.

  ‘What of Laziel?’

  ‘He is unconscious. We shall heal his hurts. Then we will know soon enough if he has fallen too far.’

  ‘Unconscious? I remember blood, and screams…’ he said in sudden dismay. Dante looked down at his hands. They were drenched in blood. The salty iron of vitae coated his throat. Not Laziel. Him. ‘The civilians.’

  Two of Avernis’ command squad caught his arms. ‘Let me go! Let me see!’

  ‘Stop, brother!’ commanded Avernis.

  Dante yanked free and stumbled back into the antechamber.

  The natives were dead, their throats torn out, skin pale from exsanguination. Dante looked around himself in horror. Segelyes yet lived. He was propped dazed against a wall, his stomach bleeding from a ragged wound. He stared ahead blankly. ‘The golden angel, the golden angel,’ he said repeatedly.

  Avernis took Dante’s arm, and drew his hand into both of his own, gripping it tightly. ‘Dante. The thirst took you. You are not responsible. You would have been dead if it had not. You have saved hundreds of civilians like these. This is the price we pay.’

  ‘I cannot…’ said Dante. He could not deny what he saw. He could not deny the flavour of vitae on his lips. Against his horror, his appetite rose again and he turned away in shame.

  ‘What of this one?’ asked Veteran-Brother Strollo, one of Avernis’ warriors. He pointed at Segelyes.

  ‘No one can know of this,’ said Avernis. ‘Our shame must remain secret.’ Gently, he shepherded Dante from the room into the airlock chamber.

  Dante was climbing into the Stormraven when a single bolt shot banged from inside. He made to go back across the shifting assault ramp of the gunship, but Avernis pushed him inside.

  The ramp closed, and the Stormraven bore Dante away.

  Appalled, Dante henceforth resolved he would take no blood from a living host ever again.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE GRACE OF MERCY

  998.M41

  The Aegis Diamondo

  Cryptus System

  The lord commander’s private librarium aboard the Blade of Vengeance held thousands of volumes. Many had been painstakingly copied by hand from data-retrieval devices broken long ago, and as such were unique. Of these treasures, none were as precious as the Scrolls of Sanguinius, ninety-nine rolls penned by the hand of the primarch himself, recording his innermost thoughts. The originals were interred deep in the Vaults of Marest in the Librarium, protected from decay by powerful stasis fields. There were only five other copies. In his long life, Dante had handled the originals only three times.

  Dante sat in day robes of red and gold at his oversized desk. Though the copy exhibited little wear, Dante had read Sanguinius’ words on countless occasions. One passage in particular he returned to more than any other. His fingers traced the words now, smooth velvet gloves protecting the vellum from the secretions of his skin.

  I fear what I have seen, the primarch wrote. My visions plague me with darkness. So little of comfort can be gleaned from them. The consequences of our victory are dire indeed, as I have described in these writings, and yet there are some things I cannot bring myself to record, visions so dark that they fill my heart with despair.

  The dreams of my father are dead, that is certain. Long aeons await of war and suffering that would break the heart of the Emperor to perceive. He never showed any sign that He saw the dark future advancing t
owards us. Does He know? I cannot credit that He does not. My gift of foresight – if gift it can truly be named – descends from His, and His is more potent than I can conceive. Time and again I have asked myself, did He always know, and did He foresee all that has come to pass? Or was He, like me, taken unawares? The brighter future I once saw has been burned to ashes and a second, rotten potentiality raised in its place. I curse you, Horus, I curse you to the end of days.

  I have written too often on these matters. I still cannot divine the answer. I shall instead write down my dream of last night. This brought some comfort to me when no comfort ought to be expected, and is thus worthy of record.

  Dante unrolled the scroll, exposing the next page.

  There shall come to pass days of great darkness, when mankind is diminished and all the lights of the world shall be extinguished, and the final scraps of hope torn away. I dreamed I was upon a plain of black sand studded with diamond stars. In the dream there was a great hunger that pervaded all time and space, a more terrible and consuming appetite than the thirst that dogs my sons. It rose from the east of the night, and swallowed the moons of Baal that coursed across the unfamiliar sky. Before Baal Secundus was consumed, a bright light flashed upon it and sped away, outpacing the shadows.

  The hunger spread rapidly, bloated by its meal of my home. Fortified by the blood of Baal, the formless hunger took shape, becoming a ravenous dragon that consumed the stars in great mouthfuls, until the only light was the memory of their glory, trapped in the diamonds on the sand. As the last star was eaten, the hellish Octed of the traitors burned through the western sky, writ in fire on the starless void. Then this too went out, and I was alone in the dark.

  Shadows swirled and parted. The vision lost its disguise of metaphor, and I looked upon a scene that may be a true echo of the future. I saw my father. Ruined. Broken. I knew it was Him, though His body was little more than a corpse, for I could feel His mind. His power was much reduced in potency, and I could feel no sense of consciousness there, merely raging, ungoverned power that threatened to obliterate my sleeping mind. This living corpse of my father was trapped in machinery that fed His soul the essence of others. I do not know if I should commit this to paper, even in my private writings. He cannot ever know of this fate, if He does not already. Or is He aware, and makes this choice between that life in death and the utter destruction of mankind? If so, my respect for my father grows.

  As the guns of the Warmaster pound at the walls of the Palace, perhaps this miserable reality is the best that can be hoped for. Perhaps this is what I must die to ensure.

  The hunger came for my father. The puppets of the Dark Gods clashed with the hunger for the pleasure of killing Him. There was a warrior in gold before the throne, surrounded by my father’s Custodians and other heroes who, mighty though they were, paled next to the lords of our days. There they fought, and there they died. The vision ended as the devourer of flesh and the devourers of souls closed in on my lord and creator. There was despair only, despair and more despair. But before I woke something more. I sensed stirring in the warp, and the touch of my father, His mind made anew, and the knowledge that all might be well.

  As I am fated to, so too did this golden warrior lay down his life to protect my father. The precious seconds he bought with his blood could change everything, or they could change nothing. Maybe the vision is false. I pray the future is mutable, and so it has proved in the past. All but the moment that draws near, the reckoning when I must face my brother. That I cannot avoid.

  I do not know who this golden warrior was. He appeared similar to my Herald, and I saw my own face depicted upon his mask, but he was not me, and he wore a form of armour I do not know. It is certain that he was one of my sons, and whether his sacrifice will prove to be in vain or not, I know this: that he was a noble warrior, true and purer than any of his age, and I love him for that, for it means that my works for the Emperor, at least, have not been undertaken in vain, and that my unavoidable death might also prove fruitful.

  The entry ended.

  The commander sat back in his chair, the ancient rosewood creaking with the shift in his weight. He did not recall the first time he had the notion that the warrior was him. Others assumed it was the Sanguinor, but Dante was convinced it was not. He had dismissed his thoughts as vainglory, and sought penance.

  His discomfort at casting himself as this great saviour grew every time he read the scroll. The compulsion to read it only grew in tandem with his conviction that Sanguinius had been describing he, Dante, nine thousand years before he had been born.

  Maybe he was like Sanguinius, facing his own certain end, searching for hope in a cruel future. But even that comparison was arrogant.

  He let his eyes wander over the priceless volumes of his librarium. Could it be that the primarch had foresight of the Devourer? That passage had mystified and worried Dante for centuries before the tyranid threat emerged. When the scale of the threat became apparent, he had known what the primarch saw. And now Abaddon struck out from the Eye of Terror. The likelihood that he was the warrior in gold increased.

  He fretted over what he should do. Should he emulate his gene-father and rush to face his fate, or should he try to defy it? Would seeking to hasten the event lead to disaster? Was it only resistance to the bitter end that would make Sanguinius’ vision come true?

  There was only one answer to that question. He let his mind wander. He imagined himself dying in the face of impossible odds. Such daydreaming was his only indulgence, and more restful than sleep. The relief death would bring to him… How he anticipated it more eagerly every year.

  He must wait. He must fight. Dante would never allow himself to give up to any enemy, least of all despair.

  ‘My lord?’

  Arafeo stood at the far end of the room, bearing a rattling tray of food and drink in his gnarled hands.

  ‘Approach, my servant,’ Dante said. He was relieved his dark reverie was broken. Arafeo’s presence anchored him to the present and reminded him who he was, and of his appointed task.

  ‘I thought you might need refreshment, my lord.’

  Dante made an equivocal gesture. Arafeo set the tray down. ‘You are troubled, my lord,’ said Arafeo.

  Dante almost shouted at his servant for presuming to know his mind. He subdued his anger and laid a hand flat on the scroll, seeking to draw comfort from Sanguinius’ words by physical contact.

  ‘Who could not be troubled, Arafeo? The galaxy burns. I have led this Chapter for over a thousand years. I served as captain for three hundred, and before that I was a line trooper and sergeant for two hundred more.’ He looked into the rheumy eyes of his servant. ‘I have fought every foe that mankind must face, from the overt aggression of the orks to the grinding of unthinking bureaucracy.’

  ‘You have triumphed over them all, my lord,’ said Arafeo. His face lit up. ‘You are the greatest hero of the Imperium! Who can claim to have lived so long or achieved so much?’

  ‘I am an outcome of probability,’ said Dante. ‘There is nothing particularly special about me. It has often been said of my kind that we are functionally immortal, but we rarely survive long enough to test the theory. When I see the lines on my face, I begin to understand what that means. I am not immortal. I have become old. I wonder often how many years are left in me. And it is not my skill at arms or my skills in leadership that have preserved my life, Arafeo, but chance. Someone, from the thousands of Space Marines of Sanguinius’ line, had to reach so advanced an age. It just happened to be me.’

  ‘You are more than a product of chance, my lord! You are a being of will, and power. A warrior saint.’

  ‘Arafeo, I am no saint,’ warned Dante.

  His servant continued to speak, his words rushing out. ‘Before I attempted the trial on Baal Primus, I used to listen every night to stories of your heroism. It was your example that made me dream of the stars, of ascending in the sky chariots to Baal itself and serving in the Emperor’s w
ars.’ He spoke rapturously, carried away to some other place.

  ‘I am sorry you were not chosen.’

  Arafeo smiled, exposing teeth made long by age. He bent forwards and gripped Dante’s hand in his cold, gnarled fingers. ‘My lord, serving you has been my great pleasure. When I was denied entrance to the Chapter, my heart was broken. If I could go back to that day when I was taken from the chosen ones, I would whisper in my younger self’s ear, be glad! Sanguinius smiles upon you, for you shall serve Lord Dante himself.’ Arafeo gave Dante’s hand a fatherly pat. Although Dante was fourteen centuries his senior, Arafeo’s paternal attitude comforted the commander.

  Dante withdrew his hand. ‘I read these scrolls looking for meaning in my life. I am afraid to admit it, but I must to someone. I apologise for what I am to share with you, Arafeo, you who have served me so well.’ He paused. The gravity of what he wished to say was unbearable. He had to share his fears with someone. He spoke measuredly, without emotion. ‘The Imperium will fall – not today, but soon. I search for a way out but all I see are the black walls of dead ends. Great victories were once mine, and confidence and a certainty in a better future. How like Sanguinius I must have been!’ he said ruefully. ‘My triumphs have become tarnished with the knowledge of certain defeat. Has all I have done been for naught? I have slain creatures that are not of this reality, Arafeo. I have faced the curse of the Chapter and kept my soul free of its taint. All my life I have striven to serve not only the Imperium, but humanity. To be a Blood Angel is to immerse oneself in blood and death. My salvation is to defy it, to turn death upon itself in the name of life.

  ‘This Chapter has come close to total destruction three times in the last three thousand years. During the Ghost War, at Kallius, at Secoris. Every time, we come back. Every time, the winged blood drop has flown from the standards of ten full companies again.

  Arafeo nodded in mute sympathy.

  ‘I understand, Arafeo, that I must be a hero for humanity. They must look on the golden mask of Sanguinius and know he is there with them as they die or worse in the name of Terra. This is my role in life – to pretend to be something I am not. I allow my legend to grow beyond all measure of truthfulness. I allow men to think me infallible and potent beyond my means. I embrace it gladly for the service it gives mankind. But although I am mighty and wise, and of the Adeptus Astartes, I am just a man. Under my armour beats a human heart alongside the one gifted me by the Emperor. No man is isolate – all need company and companionship. This is why I share my thoughts with you. I apologise for my indiscretion, but I cannot keep my own concerns hidden from everyone. They will crush me.’