Rebirth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘Fortunate then that we have a further opportunity here.’

  ‘Indeed, brother…’

  Juadek went quiet, but lingered on the rock with Klerik.

  His armour was the same heliotrope purple as his comrade’s, only not as well tended. It was battle-worthy but festooned with fetishes, strings of severed hands, ears and other appendages. Juadek also liked spikes and had hammered them into his pauldrons, greaves and boots – any plate that would take them. They even protruded from his cheeks and close- shorn scalp. For a servant of Slaanesh, he was an ugly brute.

  ‘You deliver your message, and yet you are still here forcing me to breathe the same air,’ said Klerik. ‘Evidently, you have a question.’

  ‘Do you believe what is said about him?’

  ‘About whom, Juadek?’

  ‘The captain. That he killed all of his old comrades and took their flesh for his own?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That he’s not a man at all, but an amalgam of several?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You should, Klerik. What if he has designs on killing us, we, his inner circle?’

  ‘You say that so proudly.’

  ‘I have no desire to be a part of his shared flesh.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Klerik agreed, ‘but there are others who would certainly like to kill us.’ Klerik gestured to the street rubble below and the warrior sifting through it. He offered Juadek his scope. He didn’t need it to see, but he enjoyed the enhanced detail it provided. Detail was important.

  ‘She is searching for something,’ said Juadek, adjusting the focus on the scope.

  ‘No, she has what she seeks. It just isn’t what she wanted to find.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘That’s where they killed Vaug,’ Klerik uttered solemnly.

  Juadek sniffed his contempt. ‘Vaug was a bastard.’

  ‘He was also a Cruciator, and they do not die easily or well.’

  ‘His slayers entered from the north,’ Juadek replied, returning the scope to Klerik who took a good look.

  ‘I have already seen them.’

  Klerik shook his head, nonplussed and unimpressed at the same time.

  ‘How did they kill him?’

  ‘That remains a mystery,’ said Juadek.

  Klerik put the scope away and started to back down the ridgeline, careful not to raise too much noise lest they be discovered.

  ‘Tell me something, brother,’ he said to Juadek as they dipped out of sight together. ‘If Lufurion killed them all, who lived to tell this tale?’

  ‘Preest claims a daemon told him.’

  ‘My brother should take more care about who he shares his secrets with.’

  Juadek laughed as if suddenly understanding a joke.

  ‘Heh. Preest. Klerik.’

  ‘Say nothing further, unless you aren’t attached to that fool’s tongue sitting in your mouth.’

  ‘You have to admit, it is amusing.’

  ‘You find everything amusing, Juadek.’

  ‘Especially this… and death.’

  ‘Would you find your own death so funny, I wonder?’

  Juadek answered with silence.

  ‘Thought not,’ Klerik replied as they reached the bottom of the ridge and made their way back through the ruins to their dark masters.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Heletine, on the border between Escadan and Canticus

  Canoness Angerer, not Laevenius, was waiting for Stephina when she returned to the Order’s encampment. Drop ships and armoured transports marked the confines of Ecclesiarchy territory. Shrines and chapels in the lee of the vehicles, their votive candles sheltered from the katabatic wind blowing off the mountains, threw a lambent glow across the laager. Censer smoke spiralled from the iron cradles of braziers, their cloying aromas leavened by the same southward breeze. Figures huddled in the shadows on penitent knee, alone and in groups. Some wept, others flagellated as the crack of punitive whips sounded on the night air.

  To Stephina’s eyes, looking from on high as she descended on her Seraphim’s wings, it seemed an overly defensive position to uptake when surrounded by allies. But then, she supposed that was why the canoness had given this sacred duty – to ascertain if the non-Ecclesiarchy on Heletine could be trusted.

  In addition to the vehicles, the Order of the Ebon Chalice and its attendant congregation had been afforded the use of several barracks houses and minor templum during their occupation of Escadan. It was in one such billet Stephina had hoped to find Laevenius. The Celestian had been her mentor, then her trainer after the drill abbots had exhausted their martial teachings and, so Stephina believed, the closest thing to an actual sister in the Order.

  Angerer was alone in the barracks house, her charges dismissed to their duties or in many cases prayer and supplication before the Throne and He on Holy Terra. Her ornate armour with its string of white rosary pearls and one black opal hung upon a metal frame. Her weapons likewise hung on a steel rack in one corner of the room. In place of her armour, Angerer wore her simple white chasuble. Her feet were bare and her silver hair was fastened in a tight scalp lock and trailed down the nape of her neck.

  In the opposite corner a small votive candle burned before a holy triptych of Saint Alicia Dominica. Its small flame flickered over a stained-glass vista of the saint vanquishing hordes of Unbelief, at prayer before an effigy of the Golden Throne and giving holy benediction to her sacred charges, the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice. Even seeing a glass simulacrum of these events stirred Stephina’s blood, reminding her of everything Saint Dominica had sacrificed and her own path towards martyrdom. Briefly her thoughts turned, as they often did, towards why she had never been blessed by a vision of the saint, as Stephina knew Angerer and Laevenius had, but she dismissed her concerns as selfish and unworthy.

  Angerer had neither seen nor heard the Seraphim approach, lost as she was in her fighting katas and holy effusions. Despite the obfuscating censer smoke, Stephina marvelled at her canoness’s martial skill. As a figurehead of the Ecclesiarchy, a gifted orator and spiritual lodestone, it was all too easy to forget that Angerer was, first and foremost, a holy warrior. Amongst the Order of the Ebon Chalice, there was none finer.

  Fighting in such voluminous holy vestments was not easy, but Angerer performed her combat patterns expertly and without profligacy of motion. She was fluid, powerful. Her every thrust with the fingers, every cut with the blade of the hand, every punch with palm and clenched fist was precise and explosive.

  ‘Step into my sight, Sister,’ she said, a little breathless from exertion but maintaining her patterns without pause or loss of efficacy.

  Stephina obeyed, the canoness seeing more than the Seraphim realised.

  Angerer spared her a glance as she moved through a series of punishing elbow jabs.

  ‘Have you come seeking Sister Laevenius or myself? For I can tell you, I am the only one here.’

  Stephina lowered her gaze in contrition as Angerer concluded her training cycle.

  ‘It’s all right, Stephina,’ she said, shrugging off her chasuble to stand naked before the Seraphim. ‘It is to be expected you would seek out Laevenius. She was your original mentor, after all. I assume this means you have something of import to tell me.’ Angerer’s body was lean and taut, despite her age. Rejuvenat, a strict regimen of physical exertion and bodily purity had kept her in peak condition.

  As her vestments touched the floor, a male frateris swept in from the shadows to pick them up. A second serf, also male, then appeared and began anointing the canoness’s sweat-dappled skin with holy unguents and water blessed by a cardinal of Convent Prioris. These ablutions lasted several minutes before Angerer was provided with another, lighter robe. Dismissing her serfs, she beckoned Stephina to follow her into a small antechamber.

  ‘Apologies, canoness,’ said Stephina once she and Angerer were alone. ‘I assumed you would still be in tactical discussions with our allies.’


  The canoness had taken a seat at a small writing desk in what appeared to be her private library. Scrolls and prayer books, canticles of faith and catechisms warding against the unholy, were stacked in a pair of cases lining two of the walls. A lantern mounted on an antigravitic platform hung in the air just above Angerer’s head, its oil plate flame flickering in a slight crosswind that skirled through the barracks.

  ‘Those concluded some time ago,’ Angerer replied, the weaker lamp light casting long shadows across her face. ‘Prayer and martial discipline are firm allies to my mind. Both require precision, purity of thought and determination of purpose.’ Angerer looked up from the scroll detailing the various relics that were at risk amongst the Canticus ruins. Stephina was surprised Laevenius was not in possession of it and directing efforts to find the holy treasures described. If anything, the weather-beaten parchment appeared almost as if it had been discarded.

  ‘Do you not think so, Sister?’

  ‘My canoness?’

  ‘Purpose, both martial and religious,’ explained Angerer mistaking Stephina’s response for confusion when she had actually been distracted by the anomaly of the discarded scroll, ‘have much in common, their sum greater than each individual part.’

  ‘Yes, my canoness. A pure and pious mind leads to a sure and deadly sword arm,’ said Stephina, remembering herself.

  Angerer nodded, satisfied her wisdom had been heeded.

  ‘So tell me then, what else have you learned?’

  Stephina spared no detail, and by the end of her account Angerer’s face was a mask of righteous indignation.

  ‘It has thus ever been, since the Adepts of the Stars were allowed to roam so far from Terra’s holy light.’

  Stephina frowned, prompting Angerer to elucidate.

  ‘Unlike our Holy Ordos, which are pure and free of taint, the Space Marines are at best… inconsistent. None could doubt their prowess. To do so is to invite destruction. But as to their purpose, their devotion… What kind of creed preaches the anointing of flesh with fire? What savage culture proselytises with tribal wailing?’ Angerer’s brow furrowed, her internal consternation manifesting physically. ‘This is deeply concerning, Sister Stephina.’

  Stephina said nothing, waiting for her canoness’s instruction which she knew would be forthcoming.

  ‘Tomorrow, at dawn, we fight alongside these devil-skinned monsters. I would not have my Order so close to potential calamity.’ Taking up a fresh sheet of vellum parchment, Angerer began to scribe furiously with a quill. ‘Have a cherub transcribe this and deliver a copy to each Sister Superior. Let none of the other Imperial officers see it.’

  ‘These are dispositions, canoness,’ said Stephina who could clearly tell, with the barest glance, the nature of the document Angerer was writing.

  Angerer nodded, only half listening as she focused on finishing her task.

  ‘It does not look like an allied deployment,’ Stephina ventured.

  ‘Because it is not. Our purpose is not their purpose, Sister. We have our sacred duty. We shall attend to it ourselves.’

  ‘If the other Imperial forces are expecting us to occupy certain battlefield positions, that will leave them exposed if we are absent those positions.’

  Angerer stopped writing and placed the flat of both hands against the desk as she stood. She kept her eyes down, fixed on the slowly drying ink on the parchment.

  ‘You know I have little time for dissemblers, Sister. Out with it.’

  ‘Are we going to betray the Salamanders?’

  Now Angerer lifted her gaze. It was hard as Fenrisian ice and froze Stephina where she stood.

  ‘We are going to do what the Throne requires of us and liberate this world of its Ecclesiarchy relics. That task will be made much easier with the heretics engaged with our allies.’

  Stephina did not need to hear the callousness in her canoness’s tone to realise she was being lied to. The relics were not Angerer’s main concern. She also realised that Angerer had planned this duplicity from the moment they had arrived on Heletine and needed only the thinnest of excuses to justify it to herself.

  Wrath was her first reaction, anger at being used, but Stephina buried it behind a false face of dutiful adherence, hoping the canoness would not notice her clenched fists.

  For months, Stephina had laboured under a feeling of unease. She had believed it was out of doubt in her faith, the fact she had not been visited by the saint. But now it was as if a veil had been lifted from her eyes. Whatever Angerer’s true motives for coming to Heletine, they had begun all those months ago and were now slowly emerging.

  We are blind, thought Stephina as Angerer returned to her treacherous scribing, orders that would surely condemn many to death. Utter devotion and conviction to their canoness’s will had blinded the Order to the truth of whatever personal agenda was being served here. Certainly, it was not the will of the Emperor.

  With all her strength, her martial prowess, Stephina was still powerless to intervene.

  Angerer finished her scribing and handed Stephina the piece of vellum. It looked so innocuous in the canoness’s outstretched hand. The Seraphim saw it for what it was – the death warrant of countless souls.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sturndrang, the underhive of Molior

  Ever since he had been a prisoner on the Volgorrah Reef, Zartath had preferred his own company to that of others. He valued the bonds of brotherhood and had missed being a part of a Chapter, hence his decision to adopt a new one, but his mind was most at peace when he was alone.

  Agatone had asked him to maintain a watchful eye but he could not do that surrounded by the unwashed masses of this hole they had found themselves in. He needed distance; he craved silence.

  But silence was not so easy to come by these days…

  The keening had begun as soon as the klaxons had ended, he later realised. With the clangour still ringing in his ears, he had not been able to differentiate the echo of that from the tinnitus now gnawing at his reason. It hurt – moreover it encouraged certain feral instincts, and Zartath hoped that some solitude would prevent him doing something regrettable. Slipping from his perch outside the surgery, he had gone back out into the square and walked until he was beyond the settlement’s borders.

  He ignored the fearful glances, the half-muttered threats. Blooding his claws on such wretches would be dishonourable. Sometimes his martial honour was all that Zartath believed he had left, so he clung to it in the vain hope it would save his soul. Aboard the Vulkan’s Wrath and the Forge Hammer after that, he had affirmed this belief staring into the eyes of his cracked and broken battle-helm, its coal black surface dented and scraped just as he was.

  Sleep came rarely and for short spates only. Were he not transhuman, Zartath would have died from chronic insomnia by now. As it was, he clung on, sustained by unspoken grief and a barely caged anger he did not fully understand. Something had snapped inside him on the reef, he knew that now, and there was no way to tether the disparate halves. He had forgotten so much, entire annals of his previous life. Little of it remained, scraped away as it had been by the dark eldar. So he sought solitude when he could – not for contemplation, like his adopted brothers, but to try to be still, just for a moment.

  Even at the edge of the derelict shanty, where the clutter of humanity was not so strangled by the overcrowding at its core, life still gasped and scratched for air and light. ‘Warren’ would describe it adequately, the people like cattle in their murky tenements. A hive was a collective, but it was also a hub of industry and labour. Upon reaching the extremity of the settlement and the limits of his own imagined rope, the vista that unfurled before the ex-Black Dragon as he looked back was one of squalor: a stinking fetor, a pit of spiritual apathy, its inhabitants left to scrape an existence from rock.

  Fear clung to this place in a filthy shroud, curling Zartath’s lip into a snarl as he felt the apathy and despair as palpably as furnace heat. The captain would chastise him for su
ch disparaging thoughts, but compassion and empathy were not amongst Zartath’s virtues.

  Zartath gave a bitter smile, ‘Captain…’ he murmured. More like whelpmaster. He was under no illusions about his role, and his leash. ‘I am a savage beast.’ The smile became genuine. Still a prisoner then, albeit one with roaming privileges.

  Putting distance between himself and the loathsome dregs of humanity had not eased his agitated mien. Zartath’s teeth were still on edge with the keening and he wondered if it was something to do with his mutation, if he was somehow made differently to other Adeptus Astartes. With his comrades all dead on the reef, he had no frame of reference anymore, but was vaguely aware of a change manifesting in him that had begun with the first of those torturous days at the hands of the dark eldar.

  Crouched at the briny water’s edge of a sump pond, Zartath tried to still his mind. It was vast and dark as the pond, like a rotten canvass, and stretched for some distance into the shadows. A child dressed in rags scurried at the pond’s fringes but was careful to maintain a safe distance from the hulking, cloaked figure at the bank.

  Zartath drew deeper into his hood, abruptly self-conscious of the horned nubs upon his pate and the fangs that crowded his bestial mouth.

  I am a monster.

  ‘Bless the curse…’ he muttered to ward off a sudden pang of melancholy. The words were part of an old Black Dragon mantra, one in which they celebrated their physical aberration and embraced it. He remembered so little of his old life, but knew that at least. Zartath felt a fresh curse affecting him now, a malady of the mind and possibly even the spirit, not the body. He tensed his forearm and the bone claw sheathed beneath the skin tore out, a thin line of his blood limning the razor edge of the distended radius.

  He looked up, but the child had gone. The sump pond burbled and spat as something moved beneath its viscous depths but was wise enough to stay hidden. An outflow pipe feeding the sump pond trickled thick, foetid ooze. Doubtless other things travelled its ironclad concourse and with that thought, Zartath belatedly realised the child had borne a spear. It was hunting.