by Guy Haley
When the sun westered, shining from behind the Black Templars, Amund finally gave the order to open fire.
The aliens were preparing their evening meal and were taken unawares. The first shot belonged to Parsival. The alien’s head jerked back and it half turned, half reared as its left-hand leg set folded underneath it. With a sinuous motion, it toppled onto the short turf. The sound of the sniper rifle was a clack as quiet as a kicked pebble, and the fiend’s death went unnoticed for vital seconds. Annoyed Parsival had beaten him, Brusc dropped two more in quick succession. ‘He should have gone for the falconer,’ he said, and cursed the lack of a clear line of sight to this most prominent target from his own position. By the time the second of his marks had died, the camp had erupted.
The xenos ran about, greatly agitated. They snatched up weapons – slender, stone-tipped spears and atlatls to cast them, along with those few guns of low technology treasonously supplied them by the Hamadad Collective. Their falconer whipped the hoods and leashes from his charges and had several of the large avians into the air before his brains were finally blasted out. The birds flew unerringly toward the neophyte’s position. The aliens followed the line of their falcon’s flight, pointing and hooting to the hilltop. Running on five limbs, the sixth holding their weapons free of the ground, the aliens galloped up the hill towards the Space Marines quicker than horses
Brusc drew a bead on one heading right for him, and a dark shape blurred past his scope and his shot went wild. He rolled over to see the avian arresting its ascent to swoop down at him. Four wings buffeted the Scout, talons raking his face. He held his rifle crosswise over his chest as the bird scrabbled for his fingers with its claws. Brusc slammed it with his gun butt. The bird let out a piercing shriek and flapped away erratically, its wing injured. But the creature had bought valuable time for its masters. The xenos Brusc would surely have killed crested the ridge. A sweet stink came with it. Brusc discarded his sniper rifle and launched himself backwards, pulling his bolt pistol free. The things were as quick in their reactions as they were on their feet, and his opponent knocked his gun out of his hand with a slash of its spear. Brusc hurled himself at the alien. They grappled, Brusc’s head pressed horrifically close to its broad face. They locked eyes, his clear brown to its widely set pupil-less black orbs. Hatred blazed equally from both.
The aliens were devilishly strong, and Brusc found himself grasped tight by its foremost two sets of limbs while it reared to its full height on its back legs. He shoved back, and they fell down the steep slope together. The creature rolled itself into a tight ball, its hooves and hands ripping at the Space Marine trapped inside the circuit of its body. They bounced rapidly to the valley floor, landing with a splash in the stream. Brusc wrenched out his combat knife and buried it to the hilt in between the thing’s armour segments. It convulsed once, squeezing him painfully, then flopped open. Brusc pushed the corpse aside.
A couple of the aliens had made the valley brink, where they duelled with Brusc’s brothers, and many more littered the slopes. He watched one jerk backwards, a huge crater in its side leaking yellow fluid, felled by Amund’s bolt pistol.
One came at him, feet splashing in the marsh. Brusc reached for his own pistol, but found an empty holster. His knife remained in the dead xenos. He searched the ground for a weapon as the alien came at him, brandishing a stone axe as big as a man’s torso.
The mud dragged at Brusc’s boots as he reached for the dead alien’s spear. Both projectile and atlatl had fallen into the bog, but still he snatched the spear up. It was proportionate to the alien’s size, too big for a human. Nevertheless Brusc used it expertly, fitting the spear to the caster and hurling it with deadly force right into the alien’s eye.
The creature tumbled over, skidding to a stop in front of Brusc.
The noise of battle was dying. Of the three dozen aliens, only ten remained, and half of these were running. Shots rang out uselessly from the creatures as they fell back. They were unused to such weapons, and they were of poor quality. Two more died from sniper shots before the xenos made it around a kink of the valley and to safety.
Victory was shouted from the valley sides, but Brusc was silent. His attention was fixed upon an amulet hanging from his second kill’s neck: a piece of exquisitely carved amber. The work seemed too fine to have been made by such brutish hands. He bent forward to pick it up, his hatred for the creatures replaced by curiosity.
‘Hold there, brother,’ said Amund, approaching from behind. He squelched into the bog. ‘We do not take trophies from the likes of these. This is xenos work, unclean. Unfit to adorn a member of the Adeptus Astartes. Let the serf recorders take what they will for the Museum of Eradication. Brothers and neophytes shall not touch the work of the alien – that is the rule of our order.’
Brusc looked at his leader. He withdrew his hand.
‘A good tactical choice, neophyte Brusc,’ said Amund approvingly. ‘This world is closer to enjoying the holy tread of human feet thanks to you. Soon these things will be extinct.’ He gestured around the battlesite. ‘Now aid your brothers in gathering this filth up. Burn them all.’
Before he was permitted into the chapel, Brusc was stripped of his armour. He was taken into a plain antechamber he had never set eyes on before. Monks from the Monasterium deep in the bowels of Majesty waited for him within. They swarmed him, their faces pictures of furious devotion, and chanted the orisons of hatred as they tore at his oath papers, their fingernails scrabbling on his armour.
The tabard he had so carefully prepared for the ritual was wrenched from him, the fine embroidery of his name, crusades, worlds he had scoured and foes he had killed were torn to shreds. ‘This is the mark of an initiate. You aspire to a higher order,’ said the human preacher who ripped it free. Brusc kept his eyes ahead, emotionless.
Another took a sharp flint and gouged a scratch across the Templar’s cross adorning his left shoulder pad. ‘Black for the brothers, red for the Inner Circle!’ The monk slit his palm open and smeared his blood over the cross.
From the other, his parchments of supplication were ripped.
‘Kneel!’ the lead preacher commanded. ‘In the name of the Emperor, kneel!’
Brusc did so. Armoury servitors clumped out of alcoves, the fine keys and screwdrivers upon their multiple arms whirring. The servitors disengaged his armour’s bolts, unclasped the points, and the monks roughly took his battleplate from him. Then they scourged his bare flesh with whips, each serf naming a failing of Brusc’s before he struck. He bore the stings of their weak blows without complaint or reaction.
When they panted from their exertions, they left. Shortly after, Brother Chaplain Hrollo entered the room.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked gruffly. He wore his full war regalia: ornate power armour bedecked with skull and bones, some representations cast in plasteel or carved into the ceramite, the others relics of his honoured predecessors bolted to the larger plates. The cant of the Templars was chased into the burnished black surface in red gold. Brusc had never seen Hrollo’s face, only and always the helmet cast in the shape of a skull.
Brusc stared ahead still.
‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain.’
‘Then I will begin,’ Hrollo said, laying a heavy hand upon Brusc’s head. ‘In omnibus operibus tuis in conspectu Imperatoris,’ intoned the Chaplain in richly rolling High Gothic.
‘In the sight of the Emperor are all my deeds,’ responded Brusc, his voice little more than a whisper.
‘Imperatoris sunt verba audiente toto,’ continued the Chaplain.
‘In the hearing of the Emperor are all my words,’ said Brusc.
‘In cogitatione tua pietas Imperatoris,’ said the Chaplain.
‘My devotion is in the thoughts of the Emperor.’
‘Tu quoque filius eius vindicem. Tu quoque filius eius militem.’
‘I am his champion, I am his
soldier.’
‘Dignus es fides?’
‘I am worthy of his trust,’ said Brusc.
‘Et vos accipere stabit?’ asked Hrollo.
‘I accept the challenge gladly.’
‘Ita fiat. So be it. Praise be,’ the Chaplain concluded. ‘Brother Brusc, initiate of the Black Templars Chapter, son of Rogal Dorn, you may enter the Circle of Honour. Praise be to His name, and to His holy mission.’
‘Leave him!’ said Mekal. He tugged at Garsanhuk’s sleeve. ‘He has failed the test.’
Garsanhuk looked helplessly at his friend, Ketekehan. He had expected that not all of them would survive the trial, that they would die in the Forbidden Lands of Fergax. Seeing it was another matter entirely. Ketekehan was unconscious, his leg swallowed by a pit in the sparse grass and impaled upon a gleaming spike of rustless metal.
‘They left it here, the star warriors. He did not see it. It is a part of the trial. He is not worthy!’
‘If we leave him, he will die,’ said Garsanhuk. Already Ketekehan’s skin had gone a ghostly white, and Garsanhuk’s hands were red with his blood. ‘His bleeding will not stop.’
‘He will die anyway even if we save him!’ said Mekal. ‘The star warrior said there was only death or success. No other way. He knew this as well as you or I do.’
Garsanhuk got to his feet reluctantly. The pit in the sandy soil was shallow and filling with blood.
‘Come on now,’ said Mekal, encouragingly. ‘We are aiding each other. This is a rare thing. Do you think Jukal or Velatahan will help each other?’
Garsanhuk shook his head slowly.
‘See! I feel sorry for Ketekehan. He is my friend also. But we are different, hey? We are as good as brothers. That’s why we’ll win. We’re going, you and I. We’re going to join the war in the stars! Brothers forever?’ Mekal held out his hand.
Garsanhuk smiled wanly and grasped Mekal’s forearm. ‘Brothers forever.’
‘Come on! It’s getting late. If you feel sorry for him, offer him mercy.’ He patted his knife.
Garsanhuk looked from Mekal to Ketekehan. ‘I can’t.’
‘How many throats have you cut?’
Garsanhuk shrugged. ‘Ten?’
‘Then why not eleven?’
‘Because this is Ketekehan, not some driftspinner from the woods!’
Mekal shook his head. ‘Gar, Gar, Gar! Always ready with some joke or other, but underneath the bluster you’re soft. This is a kindness. The krossovore will get him. Do you want him to be eaten alive, because I don’t. If you won’t, I’ll do it.’
Mekal pulled out his own knife, a fine weapon forged by his father, its furniture carved from the tooth of one of ferocious predators of Fergax. He slit Ketekehan’s throat adroitly. The other boy did not wake. The pulse of blood from his neck was sluggish.
‘Nearly dead already anyway,’ said Mekal. He stabbed his knife into the ground to clean it before he sheathed it. ‘But it is better to be sure.’ He set off at a jog. ‘If we hurry, we’ll make the third marker by nightfall!’ he called back.
With a backwards glance for their dead friend, Karsanhuk set out after Mekal.
A plain ring of sand fifteen metres across in a room of unadorned metal – that was one manifestation of the Circle of Honour. A single strong lumen globe shone directly above it, lighting the sand as bright as any desert, but leaving its margins in shadow. There in darkness stood hooded Black Templars. This was the other manifestation of the Circle of Honour – the Sword Brotherhood to which Brusc aspired. Here were the Crusade’s mightiest warriors and officers and they waited in judgement.
They parted ranks to allow Brusc into the ring. His and Hrollo’s footsteps spoiled the perfect surface. The armoured Hrollo sank deep into the sand. Brusc less so, naked but for a loincloth.
Hrollo held up Brusc’s hand. ‘Here is an aspirant to the inner circle of our Chapter. Is he worthy of the challenge?’
‘Aye,’ said one.
‘He is.’
‘Yes,’ said another.
One after another the Sword Brethren gave their consent. None bar the crusade’s three Chaplains wore armour. Their faces were hidden by black hoods. Half-blinded by the harsh spotlight, Brusc struggled to pick out the individual heraldries embroidered upon the tabards below their red Sword Brothers’ crosses. He knew them all, of course. Somewhere among them would be Brother Castellan Adelard, his one-time mentor, and the crusade’s second-in-command. Only then did Brusc notice that there were twenty-three brothers there, not the twenty-two he expected.
‘It is decided. He is worthy,’ said Hrollo, when the last brother had spoken. A Chapter-serf, one who had voluntarily undergone the removal of his eyes and ears so that he might serve this most august body without betraying it, came into the ring. He knelt and held up a longsword in a rich scabbard. For a pommel, it had a Templar’s cross cast in brass and was sized for the giants of the Space Marines, but otherwise it could have been a knight’s weapon of ancient Terra.
‘This is the Sword of Challenge, hallowed by the blood of failed aspirants to our order. You will only ever hold its like within this circle. Be honoured. Now draw it, and test your mettle,’ commanded Hrollo.
Brusc did so. He tested the weapon’s heft and balance, and sighted down the plain steel edge. It was a very fine blade. He pressed the crossguard to his lips and kissed it, muttering a quick prayer to the Emperor. He took up a guard stance, blade gripped in both hands up by his right shoulder.
‘Send in his opponent!’ called Hrollo. He held up his crozius arcanum and let it fall, stepping to the side of the ring. ‘To first blood! Praise be!’
The twenty-third brother stepped forward, and pulled down his hood.
‘We meet again, brother.’
‘Parsival?’ asked Brusc. His guard wavered.
‘Surprised to see me, art thou?’ Parsival said mockingly. ‘The test must be completed to certain forms. Brothers forever, we used to say on Fergax. Who better to test a man than those closest to him?’
A pair of serfs came forward and removed Parsival’s robe. Underneath he was dressed as Brusc, naked but for his loincloth.
‘They brought me here especially for this trial. I am one of them now, had you not heard? I am ahead of you now as I always was.’ Parsival smiled. He had always been colder, more driven than Brusc, even when he had been Mekal. But an arrogance had bloomed in him that Brusc did not like. ‘Twenty years it’s been since we fought side by side.’ Parsival took an axe and a spike-headed flail from the arming serf. ‘Shall we see what you have learned?’
With that he launched himself at Brusc. He held the flail back, bringing the axe down hard towards his one-time friend’s head. Brusc parried it fluidly and circled back.
‘I am the match of you, Sword Brother or not,’ said Brusc. He was not as sure as he appeared. Who knew what Parsival had learned himself in the last two decades?
Parsival spun the head of his flail round until it whooshed noisily. ‘I have outgrown your skill at arms.’
Parsival swung with the mace, entrapping Brusc’s sword with the weapon when he parried. The axe followed. Brusc was ready. Taking a swift backwards pivot he yanked the flail from Parsival’s hand, moved aside from the axe blow. Parsival was pulled forward, leaving him at the mercy of a hard strike from the pommel of Brusc’s sword.
Parsival fell down, stunned. Blood welled from his head, though the wound was quickly staunched by the blood-gift of the Emperor.
‘You might be right. Perhaps you are the better Black Templar, dear Parsival,’ said Brusc looking down at his friend. ‘But we both know I have always been the better warrior.’
‘The test is decided. Brusc has triumphed, and swiftly,’ said Hrollo. ‘Praise be!’
‘Praise be,’ replied the knights of the Inner Circle.
Brusc reached a han
d down to Parsival. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it. ‘Well fought,’ said Brusc. Parsival managed a grudging nod of acknowledgement.
‘Long have we watched you. By your skill at arms here, you have proved our assessment of your abilities correct. Now, you have one last test to pass,’ said Hrollo.
The circle of knights parted and the Chaplain gestured to a slim door they revealed. It was as plain as if it were the portal to a prison cell.
Brusc looked to the faces of the Sword Brothers and war-priests around the challenge circle, but they looked away from him. Only Hrollo’s ruby helmet lenses stayed upon his face.
Brusc took a deep breath and tipped his sword forward. The flail rattled down its length and fell to the floor. The door opened at his approach and closed behind him, sealing him into a thick gloom.
The room on the other side was also circular and bare of adornment, but smaller than the first. A larger door faced the small entrance. In front of it stood a Dreadnought, Ironclad class. The hard lines of its armour were picked out by the light of two flambeaux leaning out from the walls on chains. Otherwise, the room was unlit.
The dreadnought was inert. His name was engraved deeply into scrollwork upon the sarcophagus: Cantus Maxim Gloria. Honour scrolls and a prayer cloth were affixed all over the machine. The Templar’s cross – worked in the red and black of the Sword Brotherhood – repeated over and again upon his joints. The mounts for his carapace weapons gleamed bare, but his arms had been mounted for reasons of balance. On the left it carried a power fist and on the right a hurricane bolter, both lavishly worked with Cantus’s deeds and name. The crusade honours that covered its shoulder plating were perforce rendered small, such was Cantus Maxim Gloria’s honourable history. They referred not only to the current occupant’s accomplishments, but to those of the men who had been entombed within before him, stretching back to the dawn of the Imperium.