Guilliman frowned. ‘I understand that you believe this to be the case,’ he said. ‘Your message to us must have come at a great cost to your astropaths.’
‘It did,’ said the Lion.
‘And I understand that you felt the cost we paid to answer it was necessary as well.’
‘I do.’
‘What I do not understand,’ said Guilliman, ‘is why you are convinced. Why Davin? How will going there, assuming we can, bring us closer to Terra?’
Sanguinius answered for the Lion. ‘Because Horus fell at Davin.’
‘I know he was injured there, but…’
‘No,’ Sanguinius cut him off. ‘That is where he fell. Where he turned from our father.’ As soon as the Lion had spoken the name of the world, Sanguinius had known his brother was right. The light coming in the windows turned brittle. The sense of onrushing fate reached into Sanguinius’ hearts with its freezing touch. He felt again as he had on the bridge of the Red Tear with the shadow of the phantom reaching for him. The limits of his perception thrummed with the beat of fate’s advance.
‘Granting that,’ Guilliman said, ‘what of it?’ He looked back and forth between the Lion and the Angel, as if eager to be convinced. That surprised Sanguinius. He expected Guilliman to hold fast to the reason. It was clear the Lion had too. He was watching Guilliman closely, as if the Avenging Son, and not the Lion, was the one bearing strange news. Sanguinius heard doubt in Guilliman’s voice, and he thought it was more doubt in himself than in Davin as a target.
‘The Davinites did not travel to Pandorax by accident,’ said the Lion. ‘Their journey was deliberate. The system was their destination. We found evidence of a ritual, and of mass sacrifice. Now the system is inaccessible. The warp storm is one of the most violent I’ve ever seen.’
‘You infer a connection,’ Guilliman said.
The Lion snorted. ‘What is wrong with you, Roboute? I don’t infer it. I declare it. We have seen too much now to embrace the dangerous fiction of a coincidence.’
‘That is so,’ said Guilliman, ‘but nor can we commit our fleets to anything less than a certainty.’
‘There was a Davinite on Signus Prime,’ Sanguinius said.
The other two primarchs fell silent.
There was much he could not tell them about Signus Prime. For the sake of his sons, and the future of his Legion, the trauma of that war must fall to silence. But he would speak about some of the madness now, so both his brothers could see the path forwards as clearly as he did. Sanguinius didn’t need the Lion to convince him. If necessary, he would convince the Lion. ‘There was a Davinite,’ he said again, ‘and the daemonic attack on the entire system was massive. I saw the stars vanish. I saw a planet made over into the symbol of Chaos. The entire system was transformed. I can’t know what Pandorax is undergoing inside that storm, but I can imagine it.’ He took a breath. ‘Horus fell at Davin,’ he said again. ‘This war begins at Davin. Maybe it ends there too.’
Guilliman said nothing. He looked thoughtful, doubtful, still wanting to be convinced, still unable to let go of the dictates of reason.
‘Did you make any headway towards Terra?’ the Lion asked.
Guilliman shook his head.
‘And we were led here,’ said Sanguinius.
‘That is troubling in and of itself,’ said Guilliman. ‘It suggests we are walking into a trap. If the enemy wants us to take this path, we would be mad to do so.’
‘What enemy?’ the Lion asked. ‘I have not encountered any of the traitor forces.’
‘I have,’ said Guilliman. ‘I have prisoners of the Seventeenth Legion, Navigators who were more than happy to offer to guide me here.’ He turned to Sanguinius. ‘And who led you here?’
‘I don’t know.’
Guilliman paced the length of the iron table. He tapped its surface as he walked, striking a rhythm on hard, unyielding reality. ‘The case for Davin is a strong one,’ he said.
‘Then we should accept the truth that Davin is the key to Terra and that it is a trap,’ said the Lion. ‘What better place to prepare an ambush than on the route a foe has no choice but to take?’
Guilliman stopped pacing. He tapped the table with his index finger, more slowly this time, more deliberately, as if counting off strategic postulates. ‘If our fleets are destroyed, the galaxy falls,’ he said.
‘But if we break our foes where they are strongest, then it is our victory that becomes the critical one,’ said the Lion. ‘How better to storm that stronghold than with our combined fleets?’
‘True,’ Guilliman said, still visibly uneasy.
‘This is where our path takes us,’ Sanguinius told him.
‘I believe you,’ said Guilliman, but the admission appeared to worry him. ‘The question remains whether we can reach Davin. It may be as closed to us as Terra.’
‘I don’t think it will be.’ Davin is inevitable, Sanguinius thought. He could almost see the world rising above his temporal horizon. The Blood Angels had come to Thrinos through no choice of their own. Davin’s pull would be even stronger. He was finding it difficult not to fall into a blank fatalism. His steps were predestined. Destiny was not negotiable. If he threw his fleet to the mercy of the warp, he would wash up on the threshold of Davin.
He turned his mind away from the lunacy of that impulse. There was a difference between arriving at Davin in force and arriving as a shipwreck victim.
You know your end, he reminded himself. You don’t know its meaning. That might still be under his control.
‘My Navigators have a fix on the trajectory we must take,’ the Lion said.
‘Impressive,’ said Guilliman. ‘I presume it would be futile to ask how they managed this feat.’
‘We have our means,’ the Lion said.
Guilliman sighed, but did not press the point.
‘It will take more than one jump,’ the Lion went on. ‘I would suggest our best strategy is as tight a formation as possible, with your Navigators keyed to follow ours. We will be your beacon.’
‘Agreed,’ Sanguinius said, and the shadow came a bit closer. He looked out of the window. The afternoon was fading into evening. Thick clouds covered the sky, the narrow breaks between them limned by the cold, golden light of the setting sun. The shadow he sensed came from something darker than approaching night. It overlaid everything he saw, yet was invisible to the eye.
‘Agreed,’ Guilliman said too, after a pause.
‘Your ships have taken damage,’ the Lion said. ‘How long before you can depart?’
‘We are void-worthy. More extensive repairs are beyond what can be done here. The Thirteenth Legion will be ready at dawn.’
‘So will the Ninth,’ said Sanguinius.
‘At dawn, then,’ said the Lion.
Levannas found Khalybus on the peak of the fortress. It was a narrow spire, the platform surrounded by lethally sharp metal plates. Khalybus stood motionless, an iron sentinel looking out over the people who had come to him for refuge. He turned his head slightly at Levannas’ approach and nodded very slightly.
‘The Sthenelus departs with the Legion fleets,’ Levannas said.
‘It does,’ Khalybus answered, his metallic voice making the curt response sound even harsher.
Levannas joined him in gazing at the refugee camp. ‘We will be turning our backs on all who came to us for help,’ he said.
‘We go where the war takes us. We are warriors, not guardians. The battle calls us to Terra. Remaining here would be pointless.’
‘The people below would tell us otherwise. They would say we are abandoning them to their doom.’
‘They may yet survive.’
‘Not if the Pilgrim comes here.’
‘And if it does, and we are here, what good would we do?’
‘None,’ Levannas admitted. If half th
e tales the refugees told were true, a single strike cruiser would not last long against such an enemy.
‘Then we are agreed,’ said Khalybus.
‘We are.’
Khalybus walked to the edge of the parapet. His fists closed over the adamantium crenellations. Levannas found the Iron Hands captain hard to read, even after years of combat together. But it seemed to him Khalybus was struggling with a heavy weight.
‘When Atticus escaped the Isstvan System,’ Khalybus said, ‘he had warriors from the Eighteenth Legion with him as well as from yours.’
‘You’re wondering what the Salamanders would say about leaving Thrinos to its fate?’
‘I know exactly what they would say. It changes nothing.’ He turned away from the camp. ‘I thought, when you arrived, that I would hear their argument from you.’
‘Why?’ said the Raven Guard. ‘Remaining, as you said, would be a poor strategy.’
‘I am not sure. Perhaps I imagined, because you are still more flesh than I am, that you would feel closer to the flesh below us.’
Levannas found the camp hard to look at now, too. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘I knew what must be done when I climbed the steps of this tower. But if I’m honest, I wanted to hear you make the case for leaving.’
Khalybus grunted. It was the sound of gears slipping, the closest he came to laughter. ‘Any hint of doubt from me is unwelcome, then. It seems we are disappointing each other.’
‘The truth of the matter is, whether we like it or not, we have been the guardians of Thrinos these past years.’
‘And now that ends,’ said Khalybus. ‘The flesh is weak, and that is also the truth. These people must find their strength or die.’ He paused. ‘But if, with the force of three Legions, we encounter the Pilgrim, that would be a battle worth fighting.’
‘Salvation for Thrinos after all?’ Levannas asked. The hope felt like a grim one.
With a visible effort, Khalybus faced the camp one last time. ‘It is the only salvation we can offer.’
‘There is one other matter we need to address,’ said Levannas.
‘Of course,’ said Khalybus. ‘You and your battle-brothers will be rejoining your Legion.’
‘I have spoken with the Lion. If you agree, we shall serve out his mission aboard the Sthenelus.’
Khalybus was silent for a moment save for the faint hum of servomotors. Then he said, ‘You honour me, brother.’
‘The honour is mine, brother.’
‘Then we shall finish the long journey from Isstvan together.’
The shadow came for Thrinos with nightfall, spreading with the name Davin. It covered the land, seeping into the camps and into the tortured sleep of the refugees. It clasped the fleets at low anchor. It travelled the halls of battleships and strike cruisers. The mortal crewmembers who were off shift slept as badly as the civilians on Thrinos. The dreams were not uniform. The shadow took whatever shapes twisted through the unconscious of its victims, and turned them to its ends. Dreams of loss or hope or anger, of grief or home or victory, of desperation or of faith, all were tainted by Davin, Davin, Davin. Premonitions descended on psykers, opening vistas of terror to them that were unformed, but threatened to acquire monstrous definition. The Dark Angels lost more astropaths, and the Ultramarines more Navigators, as the more psychically damaged of their numbers fell to the new onslaught.
But there was nothing to fight against. No enemy declared itself. There was only the sense of coming immensity, and that was enough, more than enough. The horrors in time yet to come, in distances yet to be travelled, were that strong.
The Ultramarines and the Dark Angels experienced the shadow as a tensing towards the future, of an unseen enemy probing resolution before the encounter. Guilliman kept his vault sealed, but his thoughts went to the athames, and he raged silently against the sense that every decision was foretold, every choice an illusion, even as the choice about whether to use the enemy’s tools hovered before him.
The Lion sequestered himself in the chamber of Tuchulcha. He spoke to the meat puppet. He tried, and he failed, to summon answers that would satisfy him.
‘Where are the barriers between here and Davin?’ he asked.
‘Before us,’ said the servitor.
‘I warn you not to trifle with me.’
‘I do not,’ said Tuchulcha. ‘That truths displease you is no fault of mine.’
‘Then give me the truths I seek. How far can you take us in a single leap?’
‘To the limits of my sight.’
‘That is not an answer.’
‘It is still the truth.’
The Lion’s eyes narrowed. ‘Will you be clear, or will I have you destroyed?’
‘I am as clear as blindness permits.’
‘My blindness?’
‘No,’ said the puppet. ‘Mine.’
The admission of limitations was new from Tuchulcha. It was disturbing. ‘If you are blind, how do you know our way is blocked?’
‘Because something will stop my sight.’
‘Where?’
‘My blindness is not measured by location. I know it will occur.’
The Lion went around and around with Tuchulcha, growing more and more uneasy as he became convinced the being was not trying to deceive him. He emerged from the chamber hours later, no wiser than when he had entered. He was left with only the certainty of uncertainty, and the knowledge that he was dragging his brothers down a broken path.
The shadow touched the Blood Angels too. It fell on the Angel first, and spread out from him onto his sons. In the privacy of the Sanctorum Angelus, Sanguinius meditated, seeking the way to find meaning in destiny. Instead, he felt Horus strike the fatal blow. He gasped. He fell to his hands and knees. The marble beneath him did not go dark with his blood, yet every wound was real. His brother’s blade sawed through his hearts. His sight greyed with the pain. A massive figure in black flickered before him, and the walls of the Red Tear shivered, on the verge of becoming the foulness of the Vengeful Spirit.
Dark. Black. Night. Everything was darkness, and so was the thing that rose inside him. It was not blood. It was nothing physical. It was not the thirst. It was something else, so black he could not know it, yet it was his. Yet it was him.
He shouted a denial. His voice rang against marble and gold. He curled in on himself, clutching hard, holding back darkness. It strained to be released. His will was stronger, and as the spectral pain faded, so did the dark. His vision stabilised. The Sanctorum became stable again. He stood up, unsure whether he had claimed a victory or suffered another blow.
Across his fleet, the Blood Angels paused in their preparations for war, and blinked at the wave of anguish that rolled over them.
With the coming of dawn, the shadow did not dissipate. It lingered in the hollows of secret thoughts and fears. It was a venomous dust in the corners of every soul on the surface of Thrinos, and in orbit over it. Mortal and Legiones Astartes and primarch, all felt it, and all moved on to confront it. The warriors of three Legions were ready to make war, and they would burn the shadow from their consciousness with the light of their righteous anger.
The mortals below did not have the same strength. They saw the saviours they had prayed for leave Thrinos. Even the Iron Hands departed, leaving the fortress empty. So there was no celebration as three fleets raised anchor. The people looked up at the vessels, at the daylight stars that stood between them and the violent sight of the Ruinstorm. Then the stars began to move away.
The lights of hope departed Thrinos, and the wail of a great mourning followed them.
Part II
The Dominion of Ruin
Eight
A Great Work
The barrier appeared across the nav screens of the Invincible Reason a second before the fleets fell from the warp. From his throne, the Lion
saw every readout collapse into static and darkness. Every one of the Reason’s senses was blinded in an instant, as if they had slammed into something impenetrable that spanned the empyrean. That was the only warning before the ship transitioned.
Colossal gravity seized the Reason. Proximity klaxons blared. The pict screens flashed and strobed, as cogitators fought to process a sudden, overwhelming influx of data. The ship jerked forwards, rushing despite itself towards the thing that had seized it.
‘Shutters open!’ the Lion shouted. They parted over the bridge’s great oculus, and he beheld what had pulled the fleets from the empyrean.
The Invincible Reason plunged towards the wall of an impossible fortress. The Lion stared at the vision, and for several seconds his mind was unable to reconcile the structure with its size. It would have inspired awe had he seen it from the cockpit of a Thunderhawk. From the bridge of a ship, it beggared belief. He looked upon twisted, spiked battlements and towers of brass and iron. They rose from a wall that stretched to port and starboard as far as the Lion could see. The wall bristled with what, from this distance, looked like thorns and claws. The glow of ugly fires shone from innumerable apertures, a galaxy of pinprick flames. Light the colour of blood and hate moved over the fortifications, a nebula of horror.
The fortress filled the oculus, the wall dropping beyond the frame. There was nothing to see except the battlements, nothing to give the structure scale, but at last the Lion grasped its full monstrosity. The fortress spanned a system. The wall was tens of millions of miles high. It was billions of miles long. And though the proximity was lethal, it was still millions of miles away.
The fleets were caught in its gravitational well. They sailed across the void before it, pulled towards a collision, minute specks of dust blown at a mountainside.
‘Hard to starboard,’ Captain Stenius ordered. In his command throne one level below the Lion’s position, he leaned forwards, pulling at the mechadendrites that linked him to the Invincible Reason, as if he could lend the ship greater mobility by the actions of his body.
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