Cortez felt his pulse quicken. He heard blood rushing in his ears. Restless energy welled up inside him, charging his muscles, readying him for combat on the strength of the words alone.
A Waaagh!
Yes, this was something Pedro Kantor had to hear at once, regardless of ceremony, regardless of everything this day signified. The orks wouldn’t wait. Ceremony and tradition meant nothing to them. There were few things in the galaxy more lethal and destructive than a full-scale Waaagh. Even now, the greenskins might be forcing their way further into the Loki Sector, smashing aside unprepared naval patrols and planetary defence forces. Badlanding would be an ideal beachhead.
The serf came to the end of his message and returned to full consciousness with a start. For a moment, Cortez thought the man would fall over in the snow and have some kind of seizure, but he steadied himself and looked up meekly. ‘If my lord wishes me to repeat…’
Cortez shook his head. ‘What is your name, Chosen?’ he asked.
‘Ha- Hammond, my lord,’ said the man, clearly flattered to be asked. ‘Hammond, if it please you.’
‘Return to the Communicatus, Hammond,’ said Cortez, ‘and tell Cholo… tell the Monitor that Captain Cortez sends his gratitude. You have fulfilled your duty with distinction. On my honour, I go now to relay your words to the Chapter Master.’
Hammond’s eyes started to glisten as the compliment registered. With some effort, he managed to hold back tears of joy and pride while still under Cortez’s gaze. He bowed low once again, then made the sign of the aquila upon his chest and said, ‘My lord’s intervention has spared this unworthy life. He is as munificent as he is skilled in war. Truly, may the Emperor’s glorious light ever shine upon him.’
Cortez silently prayed that his munificence and his skill in war were not equal. He would be dead many times over if they were.
He dismissed Hammond with a nod towards the stone archway through which the serf had come, then turned and walked back towards the Reclusiam’s entrance. Over his shoulder, he called out, ‘Sergeant Cabrero, lead the men to Protheo Bastion and wait for me there. I will join you momentarily.’
‘At once, your munificence,’ said Cabrero, almost managing to suppress a grin.
Cortez grinned back. His spirits, he realised, had been lifted by the very thought of going to war, and not just against any old opponent, but against the savage, filth-eating orks. Now there was an enemy who knew how to fight!
‘You’ll find out how munificent I am tomorrow on the training fields,’ he told Cabrero.
The sergeant looked a lot less jovial at this prospect. He saluted stiffly, right fist to breastplate, and led Fourth Company away as instructed.
Cortez walked back the way he had came, boots retracing the trail he and his men had just cut in the snow.
Ashor Drakken was emerging from the shadows of the Reclusiam’s granite portico, leading his Third Company out into the wintry air. As Cortez marched in his direction, Drakken remarked dryly, ‘Aren’t you going the wrong way, brother?’
Cortez slowed only a little as he passed his fellow captain. ‘This cannot wait, Ashor. Be ready to attend council. A session will surely be called.’
‘Not today,’ said Drakken, voice edged with arrogant certainty.
Cortez said no more. Grinning like a wolf, he turned, strode on and disappeared through the sanctum’s doors.
Two
Tarvo Peak, Hellblade Mountains
Ramir Savales forced himself to straighten up. The mountain air held an icy chill this early in the morning, particularly now that Primagiddus, the Month of First Cold, was here, and he realised he had been hunching over to protect himself from its bite. That wouldn’t do. One did not meet the planetary governor and the members of the Upper Rynnhouse standing stooped like an old man, whatever one’s actual age.
Pulling a battered brass chronometer from his hip pocket, he checked the time. The shuttle still had a few more minutes to go before it could rightly be called late. He saw, too, that his fingers were reddish-pink, raw with the cold, and tried to rub some warmth into them.
Every year, the winter was getting marginally worse, or so it seemed to him. Life in the Hellblade Mountains became that little bit harder, and the Month of First Warmth all the more welcome when it came. But he knew it wasn’t the climate that was changing. Not really. It was his body, plain and simple. His best years were well behind him. Soon, he would have to approach the master about selecting an apprentice. Pride and simple stubbornness had delayed that particular conversation for far too long already.
He had been waiting for almost an hour now, standing on the periphery of the Tarvo Peak landing pad, just beyond the thick yellow line that marked the edge of the safety zone. The pad was a broad circle about a hundred metres across, projecting slightly outward from the gentle lower slope of the mountain like an oversized discus, supported from underneath by massive iron stanchions as thick as any of the limlat trees that grew in the far north. Tiny red lights winked in unison all along its circumference and, painted in the very centre with its wings spread wide, was a massive white icon – a stylised eagle with two heads. He had supervised the repainting of it himself last summer. Its lines were still fine and sharp, though the day’s snowfall was just starting to cover them.
Above the mountains, the clouds were the colour of wet slate. Bright, fat snowflakes spiralled down onto the shoulders of his all-weather greatcoat.
Underneath the coat, Savales wore a formal dress tunic, midnight-blue like the armour of his lords and decorated at the breast with the icon of the Chapter. It was a great honour to wear that icon, but the tunic wasn’t doing much to keep him warm. Idly, he wondered how much more comfortable he might have been in the robes he usually wore about the fortress. His winter set, woven from thick raumas wool, was much more suitable for this weather. He donned the dress uniform only once or twice a year, and was thankful that most of those occasions fell within the spring and summer seasons.
A freezing gust of wind from the slope behind him cut through his coat and made him curse out loud. He turned to look over his shoulder, but neither the wind nor the curse seemed to bother the silent, stationary figures standing in a long double row behind him.
Servitors. Nothing bothered them. They patiently awaited his command, each pair holding a lacquered black palanquin between them.
Savales faced front again, muttering to himself.
Damn it, he swore, have I really become so fragile?
To think that he had once been an aspirant, had even passed the Trial of the Bloodied Hand. He might have been a battle-brother now, practically impervious to pain and discomfort, but the critical implant process had failed. Without the sacred implants, no matter how good a fighter he was, he was still just a man, and his destiny was to live and die as one, and to feel the cold in his aching old bones.
The seventeen sacred implants that would have made him a Crimson Fist…
He had been only fourteen summers old when the Chapter’s Apothecaries had attempted the first procedure, and he would have given anything, anything at all, for it to have succeeded.
How cruel the fates had been!
How many nights since then had he dreamt of the life he might have led, sharing in the strength and glory of the armoured giants who had traversed the gulf between stars to find him and test him? How many nights had he awoken, cheeks damp with tears, weeping quietly into the dark silence of his room, lamenting all that might have been?
He had passed every test administered, mastered every task set. Death had done its best to stop him, and had taken all but one of his rivals, but it had not been able to reap the soul of Ramir Savales. He had survived, and he had earned his rightful place among the mighty while the other boys, all but Ulmar Teves, lay paralysed, drowning or bleeding to death in the stinking black marsh-waters of their home world.
The last test had been the hardest. The vicious sting of the bloated barb-dragon had almost pierced his skin. Just
one microgram of its burning venom would have brought him unbearable agony, then madness, then finally death. Three times that lethal barb had almost pricked his wrists as he grappled with the noxious creature, but he had won out in the end. He had earned his place. No one, least of all Savales himself, had imagined that his own body, his own blasted flesh, would undo all his dreams.
With the cold momentarily forgotten, his face twisted at the thought. Fifty-seven years had passed, and he could still hear the words of the hard-eyed Apothecary who had leaned over the table to which he had been strapped – words that had all but crushed his soul:
It is not to be, young one. Your body rebels. The implants will not take.
You are not destined to serve as we do.
You will never be Adeptus Astartes.
It stung him even now, a wound that had never fully healed, though it had dulled significantly over the long years. Back then, he had wished for death to take him, to end the agony of his disappointment. It would have been the ultimate kindness. Instead of death, another kind of salvation presented itself, and it had come from an unexpected quarter. Pedro Kantor, Master of the Chapter, Lord Hellblade himself, had come to the teenage Savales in person as the boy sat weeping in the solitude of a dark stone cell deep below the surface of the Chapter’s mountain home.
The master had spoken of the worth he saw in the broken-hearted youth, of potential that should not be wasted. So Savales was not to be an Adeptus Astartes, the master had said. Regrettable, certainly, but perhaps the Emperor had another destiny laid out for him. The Chapter did not survive by the blood of its Space Marines alone. In his wisdom, Pedro Kantor had offered the failed neophyte another means by which to serve.
The young Savales had been apprenticed to the lord’s ageing major-domo, Argol Kondris, eventually replacing him when the older man passed away.
Ordinator of the House, the master’s seneschal, highest ranking of all the Chosen – it was as grand a destiny as any mere mortal had the right to hope for, an honour beyond words. Savales had given thanks to the Emperor and His saints every single day since, just as he had prayed for the safety and long life of the one who had given him his glorious second chance, the very one who had charged him with greeting the Rynnite nobles out here on this bitter winter morning.
Yes, he thought, it is on the master’s behalf that I stand here now. It is my duty, and that duty is a great blessing. So to hell with the blasted cold!
Mouthing Saint Serpico’s Ninth Litany of Resilience, he lifted his eyes to the sky once more and tried to pierce the veils of falling snow for sign of an approaching craft.
Nothing.
His brow furrowed. He was about to check his chronometer again when he heard, ever so faintly, the distant, throaty hum of powerful turbine engines. The noise grew steadily louder and, seconds later, a black bulk resolved itself in the distance, just a shadow at first, but growing more solid, more detailed, as it closed the gap.
So it begins, thought Savales. At least they are on time.
Within minutes, the roar of the shuttle became deafening. As it swung in for its descent, vertical thrusters scorching the surface of the pad, its underside blotted out a good portion of the sky, and Savales allowed himself a moment in which to be impressed. The Peregrine was a fine craft, almost thirty metres long, he judged, and perhaps fifteen in height, with a wingspan to match. Its prow was decorated with a gleaming eagle sculpted from solid gold. Unlike the icon painted on the landing pad, this one boasted only a single head. The craft’s sleek gunmetal flanks bore the crests of the planetary government and each of the families that ruled the nine provinces, all beautifully rendered in gems and precious metals.
As the engines powered down, shifting from a rib-shaking roar to a gentle purr, Savales adjusted the lapels of his coat, smoothed his thinning grey hair, tugged his sleeves down, and stepped forward. He could feel welcome heat radiating from the massive turbines and willed his body to soak it in. Then, as he stood there in the shadow of the long, pointed prow, he heard a new sound – the whine of electric motors. The shuttle’s belly eased open, forming a ramp down which two men marched in the bright, cream-coloured livery of the Rynnsguard. At the bottom of the ramp, each stepped aside, one to the left, the other to the right, and rested highly-polished lasguns against their right shoulders. They did not make eye contact with him.
Savales felt a smile twitch the corners of his mouth. Overgrown pageboys, he thought with a private chuckle. They wouldn’t last half a day back on Blackwater. The drechnidae would eat them alive, if the marsh-wallocs didn’t get them first.
But that was unfair, and he felt a momentary stab of guilt. Lord Kantor had taught him better than that. The planetary defence forces did have a role to play. The nobles needed their bodyguards, and there were always some segments of the populace that needed to be kept in line, even here on Rynn’s World, both of which were duties far beneath the notice of the legendary Adeptus Astartes.
More footsteps rang on the polished metal plates of the ramp now, and a pair of slender ankles appeared at the top, soon joined by more as the planetary governor and her entourage began descending towards Savales.
He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and readied himself to greet the most powerful bureaucrats on the planet, hoping to Holy Terra that they wouldn’t do anything stupid while they were here.
Lady Maia Cagliestra’s palanquin was well cushioned, but the ride was rough and the mountain road was often steep and uneven. Still, nothing could dampen her spirits on this most auspicious of days. She had waited all her life for this. To imagine that she would finally enter Arx Tyrannus. She almost felt like singing. Only decades of well-practiced restraint, of rigidly adhering to the rules of conduct her late mother had so sadistically impressed on her, kept her from externally expressing her joy. Ninety-seven years old – though anyone asked to guess would have wagered her a strikingly beautiful forty – yet she felt as giddy as a child on the morning of the Harvest End festival.
Even the icy air and the dark vista of the brooding black crags to either side of the road merely served to heighten the experience. These were the Hellblade Mountains, the domain of the legendary Crimson Fists.
He was here.
She had waited seven years just to see him again, and soon he would be before her, resplendent as always in his ceramite plate of blue and red and gold.
At a signal from the man who had introduced himself as Ordinator Savales, the hooded servitors carrying her conveyance came to a complete stop. The convoy had reached the end of the mountain road. Leaning out of her palanquin’s left aperture, she saw that the column stood on the precipice of a yawning black chasm which separated them from their destination.
The ordinator walked back to the side of the governor’s carriage, and, bowing slightly, said to her, ‘We’ve reached the main gates, ma’am. I thought you might like to watch the bridge extend.’
From the palanquin’s shadowed interior, Maia smiled up at him and held out her hand. Her senior secretary, whom she affectionately called Little Mylos, was already hurrying forward from the rear of the column to attend to her, but he was too late. Savales gently helped her to her feet. As she grasped the seneschal’s forearm for support, she remarked to herself on the ropey hardness of his muscles.
He must have been a fine specimen once, she thought. I wonder how old he is.
Once she was standing, Ordinator Savales gestured to his left, and Maia turned her eyes to follow. There before her, towering above the far lip of the chasm, were the great outer gates of the fortress-monastery Arx Tyrannus.
For a few seconds, Maia Cagliestra forgot to breathe.
‘By the Golden Throne,’ she gasped at last.
None of the pictographs in her extensive library could hope to do the sight justice. The gates were at least a hundred metres tall. As a child, so very long ago, she had read all about them. She knew that they had once comprised the prow armour of the legendary starship, Rutilu
s Tyrannus, the original spacefaring home of the Chapter in the long millennia before the Crimson Fists had been given domain over Rynn’s World. Even today, the heritage of those gates was unmistakable. They still bore the vast shining aquila design that had decorated the front of the mighty craft.
The gates were set between two massive, square-cut towers that bristled with artillery and missile batteries, all pointed upwards at the dark grey sky, ready to fend off a threat that Maia couldn’t imagine ever daring to approach. Even the foulest and most violent of the xenos races surely weren’t foolish enough to attack a Space Marine home world.
Extending from either side of the towers were the fortress-monastery’s gargantuan ramparts, thrusting up at sharp angles from the black rock, as timeless and immovable as the mountains themselves, as if they, too, had been formed in some distant, pre-historic age. The walls, like the gates, had been built from the stuff of Rutilus Tyrannus, and were studded all along their length with devastating long-range weaponry, much of which had no doubt once graced the port and starboard batteries of the ship.
How many enemy craft had those guns obliterated in their battles between the stars, Maia wondered?
High on the slopes of nearby peaks, she saw other structures, smaller but similarly fortified against attack. The appearance of most of these gave little clue as to their purpose, but one bore large arrays of deep-space receivers and transmitters, and she recognised it from her books as the Communicatus. As she looked, a bulky Thunderhawk gunship hove into view just below the cloud line, arriving from the north-west and slowing to land on the roof of a large cylindrical building that jutted from a hazardous-looking slope to the north.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 67