Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion

by Chris Wraight

  The greater daemon stamped down again, pulverising more of the tortured rockcrete. Its axe whistled across, the rune-marked head igniting as it hurtled into one of Aleya’s troupe, bisecting her cleanly and sending the bloody fragments spinning into the masses below.

  Four null-maidens remained standing, four Grey Knights, all now pressed hard and carrying wounds. I spun in towards the monster again, knowing that only another close-range blow could possibly harm it. It felt like assaulting a living mountain, albeit one that gyrated and thundered and brought down the fires of hell. The platform was slippery with blood by then, dragged down from the unholy rain, and it fizzed and popped against the ever-kindled flame.

  I jabbed another deep wound into its veined thigh before darting away from the swing of the axe. As the head screamed past me I twisted and turned, slamming Gnosis down on the great iron shaft of the weapon. The impact was horrific, jarring my arms to the bone and nearly shattering them, but my blade broke through its tortured mass, severing the shaft in two and showering me with flying splinters.

  The creature roared with true fury then, turning on me. A vast fist punched out, catching me full and sending me flying across the blood-soaked platform. The world spun around me, and sharp pain speared up my right leg as the bones smashed and armour rent. The monster loped after me, shaking off assaults from Alcuin, its blazing red eyes fixed on me. I twisted Gnosis round in my fist, swinging it up even as the daemon swept out of the flames.

  It held the stunted axe, its shaft now broken and little more than a stump below the iron blade, high above its horned head, the muscles on its chain-draped arms taut. I saw its jaws foaming with bloody saliva, its unholy flanks shimmering with sweat, its wings spread wide like a death shroud over us all. I tried to rise, stumbling on my useless limb, and realised then that I would be too slow.

  I looked up, saw the axe head hurtle down, and knew, with all the certainty of my long training, that I could not evade it.

  Aleya

  The shaitainn was a brute. Its essence was so powerful and so profound that even our combined aura of suppression was only partially effective. At times, as we fought it, I even got brief flashes of what it must have seemed like to those with souls – a living furnace, a fire devil, a bull-horned beast that burned and burned and never went out.

  But the rest of the time was bad enough. It was foetid, like they all were – the clotting aroma of slops and putrescence. It was a thing of death, steeped in the corpses of those it had ended, and the aroma clung to it like plague-musk. I was taken aback by the size of it, the sheer bulk of the thing, and our charges felt little more than suicidal.

  That was before I saw the way the others fought, though. It pains me to say this, because I shared a mutual, unavoidable loathing with the knights of Titan and still find Valerian’s endless piety utterly maddening, but they were magnificent. I came to realise that my observations in the practice cages on the Enduring Abundance fell far short of the mark – in true combat, they were breathtaking. Alcuin’s squad were far faster than I would have thought possible, and the way they combined into a tight-edged force multiplier gave us killing potential far beyond our paltry numbers. They were everything I had been schooled to admire in the Space Marines – implacable, focused, absurdly violent.

  Perhaps Valerian outstripped them by a fraction, but then there was only one of him, and in that armour he was always destined to catch the eye. I still remember seeing him leap up at the ­shaitainn’s chest and plant that ridiculous spear right into its heart. I could have laughed out loud at the audacity of it. Not only that, but he succeeded in getting out again, trailed by the black strands of the creature’s ghastly innards. Perhaps only we Sisters could see just how badly he’d wounded it then, for we didn’t have to cope with the phantom flames and the sham-roar of fractured psy-voices.

  Of course, they would not have done as well without us. Four null-maidens acting in concert can generate a formidable dampening aura, and it crushed the spirit of the shedim. They became slower, they became weaker, and even their blood-mad lord was stripped of its monstrous braggadocio. We did our part with the blade, too. We hurt it, and that felt good. Every time my sword sliced a chunk of grey skin from the shaitainn’s greasy back my heart rejoiced. I was never going back to my flamer, I resolved then. This was far more rewarding.

  Once Valerian broke the axe shaft I thought, dangerously, that we might have a chance. Reva was still alive and fighting beside me, and we rushed forwards, beating even Alcuin to the chance to land a blow.

  Things moved too quickly after that. I saw Valerian take that pile-driver punch direct to his torso, and thought he must surely have been obliterated by it – the daemon’s fist was almost half as big as he was, and he should have been smashed into pieces. Instead, he just spun away, battered and broken but still grasping his blade and very much alive.

  It wouldn’t stay that way. The shaitainn was maddened by the mauling of its weapon and raged after him, raising its axe-stump two-handed. The thing could move incredibly fast when it wanted, almost as if it could slip between time-states. In his half-crushed condition, there was no chance of Valerian evading the coming lunge.

  By then Reva and I were running, acting on instinct, throwing ourselves after the huge creature in a frantic attempt to haul it back. I pounced, knowing I was too far away. I was nowhere close to damaging it seriously, but its trailing leg remained in range, and I somehow got my greatblade at the right angle and drove it down and down through the creature’s straining thews, parting the pale grey strands of slickened muscle until its movement ripped the hilt from my gauntlets.

  That wouldn’t kill it, of course. It wasn’t even the greatest of the wounds we had already given it, but it was pushed into its weight-bearing leg, just above its huge ankle bone, and even for a warp-forged horror, that was a bad place to take a skewer. I extended all my null-energy into that strike, willing the warp-spun flesh to part and implode. My blade did the rest, blazing with blue flame as it burned within the wound.

  The entire limb twisted and buckled, and the shaitainn missed its target, slamming the axe-head down a fraction to the right of the prone Valerian and crashing, overbalanced, to the earth. The shock was massive, smashing the already blown asphalt and sending clods of it careening. Its mighty head thumped to the ground, for the first time down at our level, and its wings sagged into ­crumpled tangles of tattered leather.

  That was all Valerian needed. I saw him sweep up from the wreckage of the creature’s fall, haul his blade over and spin it in a single movement. Crying out loud from the pain and exertion, he drove the spear point-first through the daemon’s throat, powering it with both arms until it almost disappeared into a mire of burning, ­bubbling ichor.

  Alcuin was only a fraction of a second behind, leaping high before slamming his daemonhammer into the creature’s ribs, and then the rest caught up. We forgot ourselves entirely then in that orgy of slaughter, piling into the enormous, stricken frame as if it were so much meat, knowing that it could still come back from the most incredible wounds and determined to stop that happening.

  At the end, we stood, all of us, drenched in foul fluids, panting hard, dotted amid the ruins of its cyclopean corpse. Valerian limped towards me, and only then could I see the damage he’d taken. I marvelled that he could stand at all, let alone still wield that spear.

  ‘That was well done, Sister,’ he said, the first time I ever heard him speak. It was like hearing something out of a devotional vid, the voice of a martyr sent to comfort the masses, and I instantly found it annoying.

  There was no respite. The Neverborn still came at us, leaping over the corpse of their lord, as hungry as ever to rip out our throats. The sky was lit with the criss-cross of las-beams and mortar trails. The daemon army was still enormous, still assaulting the walls, still raving and bellowing and tearing. The entire Palace was half obscured by the dust they kicked up, a
nd we were isolated, set on an island amid that sea of wrath.

  And yet I could see that the momentum had shifted. Heavy aircraft had been launched and were pummelling the ground-locked daemons with punishing volleys of incendiaries. The Ten Thousand were making ground, driving into the enemy and encircling the great shaitainn. The air still burned and crackled, the ground still trembled, but I could see an end to this. Something had happened to break the daemons’ advance, though even now the matter remained poised.

  But we were still alone, and still surrounded.

  Back to it, I signed wearily, taking up my blade once more.

  Tieron

  Once I would have been killed for witnessing what I witnessed then. No matter my rank, no matter the situation, I would have been dragged into an eyeless gaol by the Inquisition’s henchmen and ended quietly in the dark. I’d seen old warrants, copies of orders signed by commanders on distant worlds cloaked in euphemistic terms referring to sterilisations and clearances, but really signifying, I knew, death camps and mind-wipes. That was the penalty for looking upon the true face of our greatest Enemy, and for millennia there had been good reasons for the sanction.

  We had to deny what we were facing, or the fate that had befallen Terra over the past months would have befallen all worlds many years ago. We had to lie to ourselves, to the trillions spread across the void, lest we all went mad with fear. The people could not be allowed to know what was waiting for them on the other side of the barrier between life and death. Even the best of us could not be allowed to know. That precept extended to the greatest military figures of our ages, the most powerful cardinals, and, yes, even the High Lords themselves.

  For those like me, gifted with influence and resources and access to secrets, there was always speculation. We spoke of the ‘Great Enemy’, and we had all heard rumours of what that truly meant. As I have said, the existence of the Grey Knights was an open secret to the High Lords and their close counsellors, as was the purpose of such bodies as the Ordo Malleus and the Deathwatch. We knew the words, we knew the terms.

  But it is one thing to have a partial understanding of the nature of our foes, and it is one thing to read half-garbled accounts of strange doings on the other side of the galaxy and speculate on what they might mean, but it is another to see with one’s own eyes the full unmediated horror of reality.

  Looking out that night on the battle for the Lion’s Gate, I could appreciate the wisdom of those who had proscribed even the very mention of the diabolic from our waking lives. They were cautious, those early drafters of the great law, and they were sensible. They knew that only a very few could be trusted with such truths, that most were not strong enough. I had never doubted that wisdom, and so had never truly abused my office to delve into matters that were not within my limited remit.

  As I watched then, I realised I was weeping. I was crying uncontrollably, racked with a terrible fear and a horror that clutched at my bones and chilled them to ice. I was so far from it all, high up in the most secure pinnacles of the Senatorum Imperialis, surrounded by Palatine Sentinels and accompanied by Jek, and still the sight overcame me entirely. I wanted to pull away, to turn from it and flee deep into the vaults beneath. If I had given in then, I might have tried to burrow my way down to the Throneroom itself, to fall prostrate before the only one of our race who had ever seriously stood up to the nightmares of eternity.

  Somehow, I forced myself to stay. After all, what I witnessed then was being observed by millions of soldiers on the walls and by thousands of appalled scholars in their great towers. The conflagration could be seen for miles. We saw the clouds break with deluges of bloody rain. We saw the sky crack and the flames shoot up from the earth. We saw those flames twist and grow and spew forth creatures of such dazzling maleficence that the only response was to scream out, or cower down out of view, or remain rooted in disbelief and crippling fear.

  That was the moment when the old precept changed. We could no longer pretend, and we could no longer hide. Terra was not like those other worlds – its billions were not easily erased from history, and if we had slaughtered all those who saw the daemons cavort on that night we would have had an empty Palace and a silent Council chamber.

  I knew I would only be a spectator, but I felt it important that someone tried to remember what happened, and that we did not leave the record of it to the warriors we had built to be capable of fighting such monsters. All of them – the Custodians, the Space Marines, the Sisters of Silence – had been hollowed out to make them stronger. They were no longer truly human, any of them, and such was their sacrifice – they were both better and worse than we were, and I would be damned if they and only they became the arbiters of history in this, the Imperium made to shelter humanity.

  By the time I reached my vantage, the battle was already at its peak. I witnessed Valoris lead his columns into the very heart of the heaving mass of invaders. They poured out of the Lion’s Gate before spreading into hundreds of tiny points of light, mingling with the oncoming cohorts like liquid. I refused the offer of a visual augmenter, knowing that close-up images might haunt me forever, and did my best to watch without losing control of my faculties.

  For a long time, it seemed to me, the battle was horribly poised. The defence lasers on the walls laid down such a blistering curtain of fire that it made my eyes stream just to witness it, and we sent flight after flight of gunships strafing the enemy ranks, but the only truly effective counter-attack came from those warriors on the ground who could bring their ancient weaponry to bear up close.

  The worst to witness were the greatest of the daemons, those mighty roaring creatures of flame that strode across the battlefield like flesh-bound towers. I could not even glance at them directly, and merely hearing their roars, even from so far away, was physically painful. Those things led the charge against the Lion’s Gate itself, and when their sorcerous fire met the barrage from the lascannons the resulting inferno was like the voidborn destruction of stars.

  Some of them were cast down by the Custodians, working in conjunction with whole phalanxes of null-maidens, and the many brutal duels between daemon and defender were horrific to witness. But they could not all be stopped, and I could only watch as the gate itself was finally breached, its towers torn down and its guns silenced. I watched the brazen doors crumble under the relentless onslaught, and saw the first of the behemoths pass through the portal.

  Even at such a time of unsurpassed destruction, nothing I lived through then was worse than that sight. I saw the vast creature stride across the threshold, its whip of flame curling about its bloody torso, its obscene head splayed open in a roar of triumph. I saw the ancient defences stacked around it slide into heaps of burning rubble, and saw the defenders buried alive even as they ran from their stations in terror.

  I do not know what would have transpired if he had not been with us that night. I like to think that Valoris would have rallied his troops, thousands of which were still contesting the great void port expanse beyond, and pulled back to defeat it. I like to think that, if he had somehow failed in that, the mortal defenders, who still numbered in the millions, would have been able to staunch the assault with the sacrifice of their own lives.

  In the end, neither was needed. The Lord Guilliman came at last, hastening down from the heights of the Sanctum. He brought with him all those he had been able to gather from his already war-wearied task force – companies of Space Marines from many Chapters, the living saints with their haloes of gold, the last of the Grey Knights summoned from Luna. That force, so small in number compared with the deluge of monsters that had spilled through the gate, took them on.

  You will never hear an account of that battle, not as you will hear accounts of his triumphant return to Terra, nor the great crusade that followed those days. You will never hear how Roboute Guilliman fought the greater daemon atop the ruins of the Lion’s Gate as the skies rained crimson tears around
them. You will never read of how the two of them duelled amid the screams and the rearing flames, each testing the other to destruction, teetering on the edge of the treacherous precipice while the hordes of damnation seethed below. You will never hear how the monster nearly ripped him apart with a single lash of its whip, or how his brow glowed with the light of the sun when he fought, or how in the end he drove his sword into the daemon’s chest and clean out the other side. You will never hear how he choked the life from that unnatural leviathan with his great gauntlets, then cast its body down from the pyramid of debris to break apart on the bloody dust below.

  I watched it all through my tears, and felt no shame in that. My knuckles were white on the railings; my heart was hammering like a child’s. I watched Guilliman fight, a scene dragged straight from the age of legends, and for a moment I imagined I could have been there, right at the start, when it was the Warmaster’s armies breaking through the walls.

  You might think me fortunate to have seen such things. If you had asked me in my youth what I would have given to see a primarch take the fight to our greatest enemy, I might have told you that I would have happily died for the privilege.

  But just then all I felt was a kind of numbing grief. For so long we had been in moral stasis, rehearsing old stories and drawing strength from them. We laughed about the primarchs returning, mostly because we knew it would never happen. Now that it had, I felt empty. The dream had not become reality; reality had become like a dream.

  More than the gate was destroyed on that night. As I watched the columns of smoke rise into the storm-light and saw the vengeful Custodians pursue the screaming daemons far from the burning walls, I knew that the victory had only been fleeting, and that the real change had already taken place.