Rebirth

by Nick Kyme

  Drakgaard dearly wanted to burn them out, but he lacked the necessary manpower to conduct a citywide cleanse. Ambuscade complicated matters further, making the execution of a large scale mission difficult. They were spread thin and unable to consolidate.

  ‘You are at an impasse, brother-captain,’ said Angerer after she had heard the reports of all the officers. ‘And I sense the Emperor’s divine providence in bringing us to Heletine to win this war of faith. Your salvation is at hand.’

  The physically present Salamanders stiffened at this remark. Iaptus clenched his fists. Even Va’lin felt his gorge rise at the canoness’s remarks. Zantho and Redgage cut their holo-feeds. Only Elysius managed to remain neutral.

  Drakgaard gave voice to the reason for the sudden hostility.

  ‘Our salvation and inevitable victory shall be won with our blood and courage, as our gains in this war have been so far.’

  ‘Forgive me, brother-captain,’ said Angerer, bowing with false contrition. ‘I only refer to the ruins we saw upon our arrival, of a city… no, a world in turmoil.’ She made the sign of the aquila and never before had Drakgaard found it so repellent. ‘The Emperor is with you now, His light shines through us, His daughters. Surely, even the stubborn pride of the Salamanders would yield to an ally sent from the Throne itself?’

  With the Adepta Sororitas tanks, with their warriors and materiel, they could launch an effective counter attack. A citywide purge might be possible, but not under these conditions. Drakgaard could not countenance that. He had expected trouble from the Ecclesiarchy troops but not this arrogance and condescension.

  ‘Salamanders yield to no one,’ he uttered through clenched teeth. ‘Even emissaries of the Throne. You need to choose your words more wisely, Sister.’

  Angerer bowed again, but showed no remorse this time.

  ‘I meant no slight or dishonour, but you are losing this war. Whether your faith is wanting or your arm unwilling, it does not matter–’

  ‘Wisely, Sister!’ Drakgaard warned her, echoing the belligerence felt by his men.

  ‘It does not matter,’ Angerer repeated, and would not be cowed. ‘We are here. The Emperor is here.’

  Laevenius maintained a mask of austerity throughout, but the younger Sister Stephina could not hide her concern at the sudden turn of events, her gaze flicking back between the Space Marines they had inadvertently annoyed.

  Angerer was heedless of both.

  ‘Relics of the holy Ecclesiarchy are at rest beneath the rubble you have made of these temples and sanctuaries. I only pray they are still intact.’ And now did she reveal the cause of her passive aggression. ‘You are truly the hammer, aren’t you Captain Drakgaard? It has fallen here on Heletine, a slayer of relics more than a slayer of heretics, I am afraid.’

  Drakgaard half drew his sword. It was a saw-toothed kaskara with one serrated edge and the other a singular flat blade. The hilt was ornate, with a blended tellurium and gold banding for the grip. The pommel was a drake’s tooth ripped from the maw of the beast whose hide also served as Drakgaard’s cloak. It was sun-burnished and flashed like copper flame as it was unsheathed.

  Elysius laid a hand on the kaskara’s pommel, preventing Drakgaard from drawing it fully. When the captain glared back at him, the Chaplain lightly shook his head. Realising he was being baited, Drakgaard regained his.

  ‘Do not presume me to be a patient man, Sister,’ he said to Angerer. ‘I do not bear insult with reproach or restitution. You should know this about me.’

  Around the war council, both Iaptus and Va’lin had drawn pistols in their hands. From the shadows, Drakgaard’s command squad became more than just bulky silhouettes as they emerged into the light. They too had weapons to hand. None would use them unless commanded.

  Drakgaard did not need them to. The show of unity was enough.

  ‘It is the same for my Chapter,’ he explained needlessly.

  Elysius clutched the icon of a hammer he had bound to his armour with his ordinary hand and stared at the Adepta Sororitas, one servant of the Imperial faith to another. Though his face was as stone, there was a depth of warning in his gaze.

  Angerer seemed abruptly aware of her surroundings, all her bombast and self-righteousness having bled away like smoke. She licked her lips.

  ‘Forgive us,’ she said, holding up a placatory hand to show her sincerity. ‘Our journey from Convent Prioris has been long and arduous. As I said, my Dialogus,’ Angerer gestured to Sister Laevenius, who carried a scroll fastened to her armour that she now unclasped and handed to the canoness, ‘has already begun the work of charting the position of known relics in Canticus. According to her study, a great many have been lost.’ She read out a handful of names from the scroll to emphasise her point.

  The shawl of Palatius.

  Gerontium’s blood.

  Saint Acretia’s skull.

  The reliquary of Naaga Dahl.

  None amongst the Salamanders had heard of them, not even Elysius, and none cared much for the recitation either.

  ‘It weighs upon us all, the sundering of such artefacts that can never be replaced. Our religious ideology is a touchstone to this Order, to every Ordos Sororitas… I came to you with closed fist where I should have offered an open palm.’

  Acting out her words, Angerer opened her hand before Drakgaard.

  ‘I ask only that we be allowed to try to save our holiest relics.’

  Drakgaard sheathed his sword, and braced his hands against the edge of the hololith table.

  ‘Mark here, on this map, the sites of your relics. Have your artefact keepers come and do it if needed. I want to know where they are to be found.’ He straightened then, and walked around the map table to clench Angerer’s wrist in a warrior’s grip which the canoness reciprocated.

  ‘At least one thing you said was accurate,’ Drakgaard allowed. ‘We are at an impasse, and I am not so prideful that I don’t see that or accept help if it is offered.’ Angerer was about to speak when Drakgaard tightened his grip to let her know he had not finished. ‘Is it help you offer? An alliance, Sister? My duty is to Heletine and nothing will turn me or my warriors from its cause and the cause of its people.’

  Angerer showed no discomfort, though she must have been in pain from the Salamanders captain’s iron grip. Instead she nodded, her eyes meeting his.

  ‘You are different to other Chapter Adeptus Astartes,’ Angerer said.

  Drakgaard wore his helm, as always when at war, so Angerer would not have seen his smile but she heard it well enough in his voice.

  ‘We are the epitome of them, Sister.’

  Canoness Angerer bowed to the warriors in her midst and took her leave with Sisters Laevenius and Stephina.

  Outside the amphitheatre, a black-armoured Rhino APC awaited them with its engines idling. Its hull was chipped and dented from recent combat and there was dirt ingrained in the metal but the icon of the Ebon Chalice still stood out proudly.

  Knowing this was where they parted ways, Sister Stephina turned to the canoness and clasped her hands in front of her chest. She was about to bow and receive benediction when Angerer reached out to hold her clasped hands.

  ‘Sister…’ she began.

  Stephina looked up. She was stern, but could not hide her youth and relative inexperience compared to the more veteran Sisters.

  ‘My canoness…’ her voice was soft, but with an underlying strength. Her drill abbot had been a fearsome tyrant in the schola, but he had taught Stephina well. She possessed a determination others lacked, but she had yet to find the true faith of the likes of Angerer and Laevenius. She had yet to witness a manifestation of Saint Alicia Dominica as they had done.

  ‘Are you a Daughter of the Emperor?’ Angerer asked her, as softly as her own harsh and grating cadence would allow. Up close, the canoness’s votive incense was cloying to the point of almost making Stephina gag.

  Stephina nodded.

  ‘And whose will do you serve?’

  �
�I serve the Emperor’s will, my canoness,’ she answered, still bowed.

  ‘And whose will do you serve on this mortal plane?’

  Now Stephina raised her eyes, and saw both Angerer and Laevenius, a step farther back, watching her intently. Though she had served the Order of the Ebon Chalice for several years, proving her piety and devotion beyond reproach, she sensed her next answer to be an important one that presaged something more than the mere affirmation of duty.

  The Rhino’s engines grumbled, as if annoyed at the delay. Fumes plumed from its exhaust ports that reminded Stephina of grey censer smoke. The cloying incense threatened to make her eyes water.

  This seemed suddenly very much like a test of faith. No, Stephina corrected herself inwardly with a hint of shame at the weariness she felt, of loyalty…

  ‘I follow the orders of you, my canoness,’ she said, choosing her words carefully.

  Angerer smiled thinly, but it was a false thing, a mask to hide a very different emotion.

  ‘You are a dutiful servant, a dedicated warrior.’

  ‘I am as you and my drill abbot made me to be.’

  The smile faded like winter sun before a cloud.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Angerer. ‘I have a duty for you now, Sister. Is your will and your faith up to it, I wonder?’

  Stephina was not sure why her will and faith were being put to the question but she answered in the affirmative.

  ‘I need you to watch the Adeptus Astartes.’

  Stephina’s face wrinkled with confusion.

  ‘Watch them, my canoness?’

  ‘Yes, observe everything they do, every ritual they partake in, and their rites of battle.’

  ‘But why?’ Stephina clamped her mouth, realising her error. She had spoken without thinking and had failed her canoness’s test. She would be found wanting. Saint Alicia Dominica would not appear before her, even though she was Seraphim.

  Laevenius looked shocked and about to rebuke Stephina for her unintended insolence, but Angerer forestalled the Celestian’s chiding with surprising sanguinity.

  ‘Because I do not know them,’ said Angerer, and now she showed the truth of her emotions at last as her face became hard and unyielding as ice, ‘because I do not trust them. We embark on a mission of faith, sacred to His Ecclesiarchy. They are diabolic savages who worship fire and burn the bodies of their dead. We must be mindful. You are my eyes and ears in this, Stephina, so I ask again, do you have the will and faith for this solemn charge?’

  Now Stephina nodded at once, glad she had avoided the canoness’s ire but fearful any slowness in answering would also condemn her.

  ‘I am, my canoness.’

  Angerer looked over Stephina’s shoulder, beyond the dark fluting of her angelic jump pack and up into the murky sky crowding Escadan.

  ‘Then go and do the Emperor’s work. Fly, my warrior angel.’

  Angerer stood back to give Stephina her benediction, before the Seraphim was airborne on wings of ebon night.

  The others watched her go, trailing tongues of flame in her wake.

  Laevenius drew up alongside Angerer, the book clenched firmly in her gauntleted grasp.

  ‘Should we tell her, canoness?’

  Angerer lowered her gaze to ground level again to where the war was being fought in distant Canticus.

  ‘She would not understand, Sister. She does not possess the same faith as you or I.’ Angerer paused to turn. She touched her armoured fingers to the vicious scar on Laevenius’s face, the one that had nearly taken her eye. It was jagged, as if done with a blunt blade, claws… or nails. ‘Besides, we each have a personal stake in this, don’t we?’

  Laevenius nodded slowly. Her gaze strayed to a small glass phial attached to the canoness’s trappings. A clear, shimmering liquid was contained within. Then she too touched the wound on her face, almost absently. The pain of Laevenius’s injury, her scarred appearance, it was a daily reminder of how she had once lowered her guard. She vowed it would not happen again. She clenched the book at the memory of her wounding, imagining it to be the neck of the one who had tried to maim her, and lifted her gaze.

  ‘Are you certain, Sister Laevenius?’ asked Angerer, nodding to the book. It was not really a question.

  ‘She is in the Book of Names, as prophesied by Saint Dominica.’

  ‘Indeed, she is.’

  Though Laevenius betrayed no outward sign, Canoness Angerer felt the question on her lips.

  ‘What is it, Sister? You have served the Order faithfully for many years. You have earned the right to speak your mind.’

  Laevenius bowed her head, showing contrition and acknowledging the wisdom of her canoness.

  ‘How do we know? How can we be sure she is here?’

  Angerer smiled benevolently, the way a mother smiles at a daughter when she knows her child is being foolish.

  ‘We do not need to know. We only have to believe, and all that requires, dear Sister, is faith.’ Angerer maintained her smile but as she narrowed her eyes the tone of it seemed to subtly change as a measure of her hatred for their quarry was revealed. ‘Remember Laevenius, hellspawn can wear many masks. Some even clothe themselves in righteousness to ward the faithful sword from their necks, but we are not fooled by such glamours are we?’

  ‘No, canoness.’

  ‘No,’ Angerer agreed, a cold glint in her eyes at the thought of that faithful sword doing its holy work, ‘no we are not.’

  After the departure of the Adepta Sororitas, Drakgaard had dismissed the others too. He was walking back wearily to quarters he had set aside for his own private contemplations when Elysius’s voice arrested him.

  ‘Would you have struck her down, brother?’

  Drakgaard paused. He was halfway down an unlit corridor, a branch that fed off from the amphitheatre and led to a small barracks room. There was no accusation in the Chaplain’s tone, merely matter-of-fact enquiry.

  ‘No,’ he lied. ‘I meant only to declare my anger at her ill-chosen rhetoric.’

  ‘Was it so poorly chosen?’

  Drakgaard turned quickly, the choler of his earlier mood returning.

  ‘You think she was right?’

  Elysius stood before him with open palms.

  ‘No, but I think you believe she might have had a point. Salvation? You latched onto that word. I’ve seen your doubt, brother. This campaign has been overlong and much more arduous than it had any right to be. You question whether we are in need of some divine providence.’

  ‘Perhaps we are. We have yet to even set eyes on their master.’

  ‘He or it is here, Ur’zan, rest assured of that.’

  ‘Then show me to him, Elysius, and I will end this war.’

  The Chaplain held up a placatory hand.

  ‘Patience, brother. We must endure as always.’

  Drakgaard’s shoulders sagged a little, even in his armour and he unfastened his helmet. Even in the darkness, his scar-ravaged features were hideous. His humours rebalanced, veering back towards the phlegmatic.

  ‘Should we not be enough? That is all I ask.’

  ‘Whether this war would have been ended by our hand alone is a moot point now, brother. We will never know. The Ebon Chalice are here and at our disposal.’

  Drakgaard’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘You believe that?’

  Elysius conceded the point with a tilt of his head.

  ‘Well, perhaps at our disposal is stating it too strongly. Pragmatically, we are reinforced. And we of Nocturne’s heartblood are ever the pragmatists.’

  Drakgaard nodded and Elysius saw the weariness in his eyes.

  ‘You realise, of course, that you will have to treat with her again.’

  He nodded again, all too aware that both forces needed to agree on strategy before any meaningful blow against the Black Legion could be struck.

  ‘Do you trust them, Elysius?’ he asked, a captain to his Chaplain.

  Elysius’s reply was emphatic. ‘No, brother. I do not.�
�

  It was warm in the barracks house, and dark. The scent of burning metal pricked the air, adding to its heat. In one corner, smoke thronged the mouth of a small furnace. The coals within glowed a dull, fire-red. Brought all the way from Nocturne, from the slopes of Mount Deathfire, the coals represented rebirth and transformation.

  Fire changes all, as old Zen’de used to say.

  ‘Etar…’ Drakgaard rasped, breathing deep of the smoke and cinder smell. It eased him, and acted like a balm.

  A hooded brander-priest stepped into view. His head was bowed, the instruments of his sacred calling clenched in thin, wiry hands.

  Every fire-born had a brander-priest. It was he or she that would scour the flesh, burn in the deeds of duty and embed forever the ignominies of defeat. For a Salamander’s skin was his legacy and his mortal tapestry of remembrances. Like many Chapter warriors had subalterns, minor equerries or auxiliaries, the fire-born had the brander-priests or Incendum Sacerii as some knew them. It was an old term, rapidly growing out of fashion but Drakgaard was an old warrior and had tastes to match.

  They were armourers as well as priests, and some amongst the Chapter even called upon them for counsel. Drakgaard had only ever uttered his own brander-priest’s name. It was not that he thought Etar was beneath him, it was simply all the communication that was needed between them.

  As Drakgaard held out his arms, Etar took it as a signal to stow his branding iron in a rack on the wall and went to his master.

  It took almost an hour to remove the armour and Drakgaard grimaced at every plate extracted from his body. A litany of scar tissue was revealed beneath, merging with the brands that also colonised Drakgaard’s flesh. He remembered every one, knew every wound and relived it acutely when he was stood naked in readiness for the blessing of the furnace.

  He stepped forwards, limping with the knotted muscle and twisted skin of his right thigh. Smoke and heat fell upon him like a purifying veil as he felt the soles of his bare feet start to burn.

  A metal plate sat adjacent to the furnace, absorbing its heat. Drakgaard stood on it, arms held by his sides, fists bunched as he breathed deep of the fiery vapours. It was only now, during the ritual of branding, that the dull ache of his injuries abated. Pain to cleanse pain, only this was the purer.