Angels of Caliban

by Gav Thorpe

  On the mezzanines, bolters levelled at the crowd below, but in the eruption goblets both gold and silver had been thrown together, the Space Marines as mixed as their loyalties. It had been meant as a last resort, a clean execution by Luther’s command. Now the warriors of the Order looked to their Grand Master for command, uncertain of their purpose.

  In the midst of this, Luther looked aghast at Belath’s smoking corpse. He tore his gaze away, and in his eyes Zahariel saw a momentary hope, the notion that honour could yet be salvaged from the ruins of his plan.

  ‘Slay the assassins!’ roared Zahariel, pistol in hand.

  The hall resounded to the deafening roar of bolters, lit by the flare of psychic bolts.

  Luther addresses the assembled Dark Angels

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Justice

  Macragge

  The Lion acted, throwing himself to the left. He felt rather than heard the hiss of claws cutting the air where he had been an instant before.

  Silent. Deadly. An attack worthy of the self-proclaimed Night Haunter.

  He rolled, swinging his sword across to block the next blow, the blade ringing against Curze’s swipe. The Lion twisted, using it as a sword-breaker to trap a crackling fist. The move exposed the Lion’s left side. Curze saw the opening and struck as quick as a viper, driving the dagger-claws of his right hand into the gap between the Lion’s left pauldron and the gorget protecting his neck.

  The pain flared up through his shoulder but the Lion had been expecting it and was moving even as the signals were buzzing along his nerves. He grabbed Curze’s wrist in his fist, the two of them locked together.

  Curze’s nightmarish face was just a metre away. Gaunt. More than that, almost skeletal now, his flesh wasted to white skin and muscle, not an ounce of fat between surface and bone. His eyes were black, glinting in the golden light of irradiated snow. Thin lips were drawn back in a mad grin, exposing dirty pointed teeth and withered gums. A tongue like a lizard’s flickered over the yellowing fangs.

  ‘You have lost the only weapon that would have killed me,’ the Lion growled.

  ‘And which one is that?’ Curze replied. His voice was as tainted by madness as his expression. Quick as lightning, the Night Haunter seemed to buckle, legs collapsing unnaturally as he fell away from the Lion’s grasp and twisted. He flourished his freed right claw. ‘This one?’

  The claw speared towards the Lion’s face, two fingers forming points aimed for the eyes, intended to blind, not kill. The Dark Angels primarch swayed out of the attack, his open hand whipping his bolter from his belt as he did so, like a pistol in his grip.

  ‘Surprise,’ the Lion spat.

  He fired point-blank. The stream of bolts exploded across the Night Haunter’s chest and face. Black flecks of paint and ragged skin tatters flew away from the detonations. With a screech Curze threw himself backwards, back arching and twisting as he wheeled away from the next salvo of bolts, his claws striking out as he cut the projectiles from the air.

  And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.

  ‘In midnight clad,’ the Lion said, reloading his bolter. He turned slowly, ears seeking the slightest sound, eyes and other senses seeking to penetrate the swirling storm and shadowed stone trees. ‘Predictable. So predictable. You have become a caricature, Curze. Once you were the terrible hand of justice, the dark avenger, the Night Haunter. Now you are just a clown, seeking justification for your pointless existence.’

  A chuckle emanated from the darkness, followed by a whisper.

  ‘We were born with the darkness in us. We cannot help the fact that we are murderers, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. We were born with dark gods standing as our sponsors beside the beds where we were ushered into the world, and they have been with us since.’

  ‘I have heard such claims before. I heard the promises and threats from the lips of the nephilla. My dreams were of storms and darkness too. I renounce your weakness. I have killed, but I am no murderer.’

  ‘Really?’

  The Lion took a few paces towards the voice, stepping slowly with pistol held at the ready, blade to one side to parry. His eyes were in constant motion, piercing the darkness, watching for the faintest disturbance in the flurries of snow, seeking any imprint on the ash-covered ground. Curze’s next words sounded more distant, from the left.

  ‘I just like to kill. I want to kill.’

  An exhalation. The faintest murmur.

  The Lion turned, finger already squeezing the trigger as he brought up his sword point. Curze seemed to coalesce out of the drifting fragments of vaporised matter and ice. One moment empty space, the next gleaming claws speared towards the Lion’s chest, their pale witchglow lighting Curze’s snarling face from below.

  The explosion of bolts seemed bright and colourful in the monochromatic whirl. Each became a blossom of red and orange surrounded by an aura of ceramite splinters. Blue lightning buzzed as one set of Curze’s claws raked along the Lion Sword and the other flickered past the Dark Angel’s face.

  Curze was gone again, a wraith in the fog.

  The Lion felt blood trickle down his right cheek. He started to turn once more, blade held horizontal. Curze’s next taunt came from behind.

  ‘We’ve all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren’t afraid, they control life itself.’

  The Lion resisted the urge to spin towards the voice. It was a feint and he swung his sword to the right out of instinct, the same instinct that had saved him so many times in the forests of Caliban.

  Curze let out a wail of pain, his claws lashing past the Lion’s head, lanced onto the point of the Lion’s blade. The Dark Angel thrust hard, pushing the sword another half-metre into Curze’s gut.

  ‘Clever Lion,’ Curze sneered, wrenching himself away from the blade, leaving a slick of dark blood dribbling along the fuller. ‘Total paranoia is just total awareness.’

  The Lion wasted no breath with more talk and opened fire with his last few bolts. Curze was gone again and they flared harmlessly into the petrified trees. He hung the empty weapon on his belt and drew a second, shorter sword in its place.

  He started to step backwards, careful never to stop for a moment, turning, adjusting his weight, ready to shift and counter-attack in a heartbeat. With a backhanded slash, the Lion sheared through a petrified tree. It fell to the ground with barely a noise, muted by the ashen snow.

  The primarch cut another and another, creating an open space about twenty metres across, expanding it with each felled tree.

  ‘You can’t cut down a whole forest to catch me,’ Curze said.

  The Lion said nothing and chopped through another stone trunk with a single blow. He took three more paces to the next tree and drew back his sword arm.

  Curze launched at the Lion with claws outstretched, their tips cutting through falling snowflakes and motes of ash. The Dark Angel had been expecting the attack, had offered himself up to draw it out. His short sword was already rising to meet Curze’s downward stroke.

  The edge of the blade crashed against the underside of Curze’s right hand, deflecting the blow above his shoulder. The Lion smashed his right hand into the Night Haunter’s chin, pale skin scraping off across the knuckles as the blow sent his foe reeling.

  This time there was no hesitation, no circumspect moment worrying about a counter-attack. The Lion threw himself after Curze before he could vanish, slashing and stabbing at his foe as he turned to retreat. He caught a glancing blow across Curze’s calf, the tip of the Lion Sword shearing through the midnight-blue armour.

  Almost tripping, Curze rolled to the left but the Lion was already upon him, switching his grip on the short sword to drive it down into the Night Haunter’s left side. Curze hissed and lashed his claws blindly backwards, raking furrows across the Lion’s outstretched arm.

  Curze was on his feet in the moment it took the Lion to recover, and three strides later had mana
ged to lose himself in the storm once more. This time he could not disappear completely. The Lion smelled blood on the air, tasted the rad-wash from the armour of his prey. His skin prickled with the warp-taint of Curze.

  He followed at a run, knowing exactly what the Night Haunter was planning to do.

  The Lion burst out of the petrified trees just in time to see a darker shadow flit between the grey granite columns of the pagan Illyrian temple. He followed quickly, boots on stone like the sudden crash of thunder. Dodging between the pillars, the Lion made his way to the centre, where broad steps descended into the catacombs beneath the gate. Above, the roof did not form a complete dome, but was fashioned to leave a vaulted space above the centre. Thick beams formed two squares, one diagonally inside the other.

  The Dreadwing had mapped it well, cataloguing every hall and antechamber, passageway and arch, stairway and cupboard. The Lion had memorised the layout from their reports. He had to expect that Curze had scouted every possible attack site and knew the locale in the same detail.

  The subterranean reaches of the temple were spread over three levels, but the Lion made his way to the deepest, judging that Curze’s sense of theatrics would lead him to the mausoleum where ancient priests had been interred in stone coffins.

  A duel among dead heathens.

  The tomb chamber was an octagonal shape thirty metres across and five high, big enough for the two primarchs to move without difficulty. The centre of the chamber was a disc of black stone, etched with a silver star. A faint light emanated from this slab, enough to show up the marble sarcophagi at each point of the star. Each was topped with a gisant representing the interred priests, clasping to their chests various sceptres, swords and orbs of their office. The Lion saw patrician faces, noble and strong-browed, faces set in peaceful death.

  The sides of the tombs were carved with intertwining nightmarish figures – skeletal Deaths, fanged monstrosities, bat-winged devils. Outside the central eight were eight more, and in the circle about that, three of the tombs had gisants upon them, the other five empty.

  The Lion stopped at the threshold, beneath a pointed arch at the bottom of the stairs that led into the catacomb. Curze crouched atop one of the vacant sarcophagi opposite. Blue sparks flew and the air split with a piercing screech as he drew a clawed finger along the rough stone.

  ‘Can you hear their confessions, brother?’ the Night Haunter said quietly. He scratched the tomb again, lips pursed with pleasure. ‘They lived for the darker powers, long before our righteous brother ever set foot in Macragge Civitas. Think, Lion of Caliban, what might have been had Roboute woken from his slumber in the highlands of Illyrium rather than the forests around Hera’s Fall. It might have been his hand and not an assassin’s that cut down noble Konor.’

  ‘You know a lot about Macragge’s history.’

  ‘The Illyrians told me much.’ Curze’s lips twisted upwards in a disgusting, leering parody of a smile. ‘They were so happy to have a demigod delivered to them, setting right the balance weighed against them so many decades ago.’

  ‘Most of them are dead now,’ said the Lion. He took a step. The glow of the Lion Sword and the powerfield of his second blade better illuminated a semicircle of the chamber. He saw that every brick in the ceiling, walls and floor was inscribed with the same angular device. Curze noticed his gaze.

  ‘It’s an old Illyrian word, anorth.’ Curze shifted, slithering down to the floor, still hunched.

  ‘What does it mean?’ The Lion did not care, but the question occupied Curze as the Dark Angel took another step forward.

  ‘Many things. The end. The beginning. The heights and depths. The warp.’ Curze shrugged. ‘Disorder. Anarchy. The unmaking of things and return to the womb. A complex concept for a nation of clueless barbarians, would you not agree?’

  ‘And because you used them as a shield, they are all dead. I have erased what was left of their culture. You tainted it.’

  ‘How does that make you feel?’ Curze ran a narrow tongue over his fangs, head cocking to one side. ‘Mothers and fathers dead. Orphans made and offspring slain. All for me.’

  ‘What do you care?’ The Lion advanced another pace. He was level with the outer ring of tombs, twenty metres from Curze. He knew there was no other way out of the chamber.

  ‘I like children. They are tasty.’

  ‘You are broken.’ The Lion felt deep disgust, sickened by what had become of his brother. ‘You were vile and twisted in Thramas, and perverse on Tsagualsa, but now you have sunk even lower.’

  ‘Even psychopaths have emotions,’ Curze said, affecting a sad face, brow furrowed, lips downturned. ‘Then again, maybe not.’

  He sprang onto a sarcophagus and used it to propel himself towards the ceiling. Incredibly he skittered over the stones like a spider, finding purchase for a few metres until he twisted and dropped towards the Lion.

  The Dark Angel crashed backwards into a sarcophagus trying to avoid the attack. Claws left lacerations across his chest and right arm, the gouged ceramite splintering like bone.

  Curze’s foot smashed into the Lion’s face as he bounded away, turning in mid-air to land cat-like at the bottom of the steps. The Night Haunter looked over his shoulder with a vicious grin and raised his left hand. Between his fingers was something odd. It was a red gauntlet, two spurs of broken bone jutting from the severed wrist.

  The Lion guessed what it was immediately. ‘Azkaellon’s hand?’

  ‘A little tinkering with his terminus device…’

  The Night Haunter waved the hand with a smile and started up the stair. Three steps later he stopped and looked back, brow furrowing with confusion. He waved the hand again, even more dramatically.

  ‘I told you that you were becoming predictable,’ said the Dark Angel, advancing with the Lion Sword held in front of him. ‘An enclosed space laced with explosives? You did that in the Chapel of Memorial, trying to bury me and Guilliman. And then how clever you must have felt, turning Azkaellon’s failsafe device against him, destroying the entrance to the lord emperor’s hall and trapping the Sanguinary Guard outside. I can imagine you chuckled long and hard. It was curious that Azkaellon’s arm was never found. Melta-bombs went missing from one of my armoury supply transports yesterday. Did you really think you could trick me again?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Should I speak more slowly? While you followed me to the peak, dogging my steps like an impotent shadow, my men disarmed the melta-bombs you stole and planted here.’

  The Lion broke into a run. With an irritated hiss, Curze hurled the Blood Angel’s hand at the primarch and sprinted up the stairwell. The Lion followed a few metres behind, too close to allow his foe the chance to spin and attack.

  Curze turned left and right, navigating the corridors with ease, slipping around the corners and junctions like a wisp of smoke. They raced through rows of wooden chambers lined with cabinets and shelves, where centuries-old ink stains and flecks of paint still blotted lecterns and desks. The Lion was more ponderous in his pursuit, crashing into the walls as he turned at speed, rebounding from ancient bricks with growls and snarls.

  They reached the steps leading up to the surface. The Lion stopped, his boots sliding for a moment across the wet ash that had been blown down from above. Curze did not pause and was halfway up the steps.

  A faint hiss sounded from the opening at the top of the stairs. Curze stumbled to a halt a moment before the hunter-killer missile smashed into the steps above him. Stone shards and shrapnel engulfed the Night Haunter as the blast-wave tossed him against the wall.

  The stairwell rang in the aftermath, but not loud enough to mask the approaching roar of plasma jets. The Lion also heard the thud of boots on the stones above. He caught a glimpse of the three Fire Raptors hovering over the open domework on the surface.

  ‘I brought some friends.’ The Lion raised his blades, blocking the bottom of the stairs. ‘I never cared much for the necessities of drama.’

  Cu
rze’s look of betrayal was almost comic. His shock quickly turned to anger. The Lion had never seen the like, his brother’s face becoming a mask of pure rage.

  ‘You maggots make me sick. I will be avenged! Darkness dwells within us all.’

  Curze became a grim missile tipped with glinting claws, spearing down the stairwell. The Lion swung his blade, feeling it bite armour and flesh, but the Night Haunter’s impetus barrelled them both down to the stones with a crash of armour.

  They rolled, parted and came to their feet facing each other, stooped below the ceiling of the passageway.

  This time there was no taunting, no cat-and-mouse. Curze’s claws whirled and slashed with insane fury and it took all of the Lion’s focus to defend himself against the assault. He was forced to give ground, a storm crackling between him and the Night Haunter as field-sheathed swords and lightning claws clashed and shrieked.

  ‘You can’t kill me!’ roared Curze, lancing a claw towards the Lion’s throat, the blow deflected by a last-minute swing of his short sword. ‘You don’t kill me!’

  The words seem to settle Curze, though the ferocity of his attack did not relent. A dozen new rents opened up across the Lion’s armour amidst the flood of blows. He felt the burn of a near-miss sear across his forehead, momentarily blinding him in his right eye.

  ‘You have to accept it,’ Curze spat. ‘You don’t kill me. I am redeemed, my life taken by one of the Emperor’s assassins.’

  ‘I accept nothing,’ the Lion replied, expression grim. He parried another swiping claw and stopped giving ground. The Lion Sword leapt up as though fuelled by its own lifeforce, tip plunging through Curze’s right forearm, pinning him to the wall of the corridor.

  With a sickening rip of flesh and cracking armour, the Night Haunter tore his arm free, leaving near-desiccated skin and oily blood stuck to the bricks. The tips of the claws cut the Lion’s throat, just a scratch really, but enough to send him reeling back a few more steps.