Blood Rite - Rachel Harrison

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘And such an offering it is, too,’ he says. ‘This fractured angel, with violence boiling his blood.’

  Sanyctus roars at the Word Bearer. His claws light and he takes a step forwards.

  ‘Wait,’ Darrago says, because he can guess what will happen should Sanyctus try and cross that burning circle. ‘Adiccio.’

  ‘I will show you violence,’ Sanyctus bellows at them. ‘I will show you blood.’

  The Word Bearer laughs again, and his four brothers echo it.

  ‘Perfect,’ he says. ‘Just as the Blessed said.’

  There is another creak of ceramite, and with a rolling cloud of smoke, leathery wings unfold from the traitors’ backs, casting long shadows in the light from the witchfire.

  ‘Such a shame,’ says the Word Bearer, with his five golden eyes flickering. ‘For you to think yourselves angels, but never to know how it truly feels to fly.’

  His next word is an echoing chain of syllables that sends Darrago blind for an instant and makes his ears ring. The witchfire circle rolls out as the Word Bearers snap their wings and leap into the air. Darrago moves with his brothers to shield Sanyctus, taking the brunt of the tide of witchfire across his armour. The standard is caught in it too, making the glories wrought in golden thread catch and smoulder. Darrago feels the fire as if he is not wearing armour at all. It scorches his skin, and stings his eyes and his throat as he tries to breathe.

  Through the blindness and the pain, he barely manages to raise his storm bolter and fire at the Word Bearer that comes to kill him, claws outstretched. This one has no eye-lenses at all. His faceplate has shaped itself to resemble nothing but teeth. The traitor’s armour shifts to catch the detonations from the bolt-shells and deflect them in the instant before he lands heavily, trying to knock Darrago to his knees. He punches his jagged claws through Darrago’s armour at the shoulder and the chest. The pain of it sets Darrago’s nerves alight and makes his vision dazzle. He cannot cry out, because with the claw buried in his chest he cannot breathe, but Darrago does not fall, because he is made to stay standing. He is made to endure and defy. He moves despite the bleeding and the pain and his empty, breathless lungs, firing his storm bolter at point-blank range up into the Word Bearer’s body.

  The traitor goes reeling and his claws come clear. That hurts twice as badly. Darrago’s armour systems blare warnings in his ears. The Word Bearer snaps his wings to regain his balance, but Darrago will not let him fly again. He punches the standard pole through one of the traitor’s wings and pins him to the ground with it. The Word Bearer twists and pulls and the wing tears and begins to reshape, but he is not quick enough this time. Darrago empties the rest of the storm bolter’s magazine into the traitor’s head and chest until the ceramite cracks and the bones beneath it shatter and the heretic falls with a crash of armour plates, bleeding black all over the floor.

  Darrago pulls the standard free and he turns to see his brothers fighting furiously to keep the Word Bearers from taking Sanyctus. Ebellius shatters the frozen, grinning helm of one of them with a blow from his power fist. Maeklus has set one of them afire, but the Word Bearer keeps his feet, fighting even as he burns. Victorno uses his storm shield to push the one with the five golden eyes onto his back foot.

  ‘Every drop of blood spilt is just another offering,’ the Word Bearer says. ‘The rite has already begun!’

  He turns Victorno’s hammer strike aside with his gauntlet, though such a thing should not be possible. It sets Victorno off-balance, opening his guard. Then the Word Bearer lashes out with his other clawed hand, shattering Victorno’s faceplate and sending his blood across the marble floor. The sergeant staggers and slurs an old Baalite curse. Darrago’s bolter is empty, so he charges instead, but he is slow from his wounds and the way the witchfire burned him.

  So Sanyctus gets there first.

  Sanyctus hits the Word Bearer with all of his weight, burying both of his lightning claws in the traitor’s chest.

  ‘Perfect,’ says the Word Bearer. ‘Such a perfect, violent thing.’

  He steps back and free of Sanyctus’ claws with a welter of black blood and smoke. The traitor answers with his own claws. One strike opens Sanyctus’ face to the bone. The other buckles his chest plate and drives him to his knees.

  ‘No!’ Darrago shouts.

  The Word Bearer’s mask tilts towards him, and the warped ceramite splits like a smile.

  ‘Blood,’ he says. ‘For the Blessed.’

  Then there is a roar, and the Word Bearer’s smiling mask is pulverised by a spear of bright light fired from behind Darrago. The Word Bearer staggers backwards and lets go of Sanyctus, his faceplate trying to reshape through the colossal damage. Darrago looks back to see Captain Donato haloed by light as he charges into the fray. Phaello is with him, and the two shield-brothers that remain of his squad, Ivaro and Lurani.

  ‘No,’ Donato bellows. ‘The only blood spilt here will be yours.’

  TWO

  WEAPONS

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  Larracus Donato has never found much respite in rest, so when he is not called to battle, he trains. He chooses to do so without his Terminator plate. Without his power fist or his storm bolter. Instead, he wears the kind of roughweave training clothes an aspirant might wear. That too is because it allows him respite, from the weight of the armour and what it means to wear it, but there is another reason for Donato’s choice.

  Because there is value in remembering what you once were.

  So Donato trains alone in the lower decks of the Sanguine Tear, under white-hot lumens that remind him of home and make the wooden boards underfoot warm. He trains with a simple, short-bladed sword that he cast for himself. The combat servitors outnumber him three to one. They are armed with their own jagged blades and set to draw blood, because there is no respite in an easy fight either. Donato turns aside from the erratic motion of the first, and puts the momentum of that movement into severing the second servitor’s arm at the shoulder. His follow-up strike sends it reeling and broken and sprays oil across the training hall floor.

  Donato’s hearts beat steadily in his chest. His mind is clear, and the fury far away. This fight is to him as painting or poetry is to his brothers. It is about artistry. About technical skill, and perfect execution. The third servitor lunges for him with its heavy, augmented limbs. Donato ducks under the strike and punches his sword through the servitor’s nervous centre. It spasms and falls aside. As he moves to finish the fight, the heavy doors to the training hall open and an armoured figure enters. One of Donato’s brothers, but one he rarely has cause to speak with. One he feels no joy at the sight of. His brother waits in silence outside the training circle. There is no ending the fight other than by victory, so Donato despatches the last of the servitors quickly. That last one manages to cut him before it falls, snagging him across the arm with the jagged blade it carries.

  ‘Damn,’ Donato says, and he puts his hand to the wound.

  It is not severe. Donato barely feels the cut itself, and it certainly will not scar, but his hearts are not steady now. The fury is not so distant. To some degree, it is because of the blood; even spilling his own sets the curse he carries singing. But Donato is practised at ignoring that song. The true cause for his unrest is that Donato knows that he could have won without injury, but he let the presence of his silent, watchful brother unsettle him.

  ‘I would speak with you, brother-captain,’ his brother says.

  ‘Then speak,’ Donato says, as he crosses the hall and takes up a cloth with which to clean the oil from his training sword. Normally thralls would already be clearing the circle, but there are none present. The questions that this brother asks are only for those of the Chapter to hear. ‘Know that if you mean to ask about Luminata, I fear there is little more I can add,’ Donato says. ‘I have already made my report. I have already spoken with Lord Commander Dante.’

  His brother has crossed the hall too. If the mention of Dante’s name g
ives him pause, he does not show it. Nothing ever shows on his face in moments like these.

  ‘I have read your report,’ his brother says. ‘It told me much, but not everything.’

  Donato catches his own reflection in the blade of the training sword. Just like the wound he took from the servitor, the scars that he earned on Luminata are already fading.

  ‘Then what do you want me to tell you?’ he asks.

  ‘I want you to tell me about Adiccio Sanyctus,’ his brother says.

  That does stoke the fury in Donato’s blood. He waits for it to pass before he speaks again, because he must be calm in the face of his brother’s questions.

  ‘You want me to tell you of Sanyctus,’ he says. ‘I will tell you. He has given much in the name of our father. In the name of the Throne, and of the Emperor. I saw him save Victorno’s life when we fought at the foot of the Stone Saint. He felled the ork tyrant of Kalatar. Stood against a tyranid horde alone at the Shieldworlds’ edge, to allow the Astra Militarum to regroup and emerge victorious. To spare the lives of mortals and lend them strength.’

  ‘Those stories too, I know,’ his brother says. ‘Glories are not why I am here.’

  Donato shakes his head. ‘No, they are not,’ he says, coldly.

  His brother does not remark on his words, or the tone of them, though he would have the right to.

  ‘I want you to tell me what truly happened at Sanguis Gloria,’ his brother says. ‘I want to know what became of Adiccio Sanyctus.’

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  Donato watches as Maeklus sets light to the circle of offerings and the bodies burn all over again, this time gold and red, and not unnatural blue. His helm filters out the smoke, but not the scent of it. Funeral pyres. Donato lets the last outside transmission he received after teleportation play back again.

  There will be no reinforcements, it says. What forces remain on the surface work to clear the pilgrims’ city of traitors, and of innocents. This task is left to your Archangels, brother. If the shrine cannot be saved, then it must fall, and our enemies with it.

  ‘They sought to take Sanyctus.’

  Donato turns from the fire at the words. Darrago’s armour is split and battered and splattered with black blood. The Company Ancient is breathing with a rasp that suggests the slow reknitting of a punctured lung. He has removed his helm and locked it to his waist, exposing a face made up of blunt angles and old scars. The aquila brand burned into Darrago’s flesh is stark but his eyes, as always, are contemplative. The Company Ancient is a warrior, as they all are, but over time he has become the conscience of every one of the Archangels, including Donato.

  ‘Just Sanyctus,’ Donato says.

  Darrago nods. ‘The one with the golden eyes called him perfect,’ he says, absently. ‘A perfect, violent thing.’

  Donato thinks about that. About Kalatar, and the Shieldworlds’ edge, and every battle before this, and he cannot find a lie in those words.

  ‘We will not let them take him,’ Donato says. ‘I do not intend to lose another brother.’

  Darrago shakes his head. His eyes are more than contemplative now. They look sorrowful.

  ‘Nor do I,’ he says.

  ‘Spare an eye for him, Thaneod,’ Donato says. ‘Just as we spoke about.’

  ‘Always,’ Darrago says, with a nod. ‘The traitor said something else. He called Sanyctus the last sacrifice. For the Blessed.’

  The Blessed.

  Donato snarls at the name. At the twisted suggestion of it.

  ‘The name that Tur Zalak has given himself,’ he says. ‘He thinks himself a priest. Thinks himself enlightened. He is no more than a heretic. A mad dog, serving false gods. His death is long overdue.’

  ‘We will serve it here,’ Darrago says. ‘For our lost.’

  Donato puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  ‘For all of the lost,’ he says, because he does not just want to kill Zalak for those lost here. For Arthemio and Alfeo and Vytali. He wants to kill Tur Zalak for what he did on Perdicia. For the cult of masks, and for the knotted scar across his chest that Zalak gave him that still aches, though it has no right to. He wants to kill Zalak for every one of his sins, from the Great Heresy until now, but most of all Donato wants to kill him to clear the stain on his honour. On Perdicia, Donato failed, but he will not fail again. Not here, under the sight of his father.

  ‘We go now,’ he tells Darrago. ‘And we end it.’

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  Donato chooses to continue the questioning in his own chambers, rather than the training hall. It is a large chamber as befits his rank. Weapon racks line the walls, hung with instruments of war. Swords and spears. Axes and knives. Donato walks to the empty space and racks the sword he trained with alongside the others.

  ‘All of these weapons were made by your hand?’ his brother asks.

  ‘Every one,’ Donato says.

  It is another act that quiets the song in his blood. Another deliberate act that requires technical skill and perfect execution. He never uses them in battle, only in training, when he is trying to find peace.

  ‘The broken ones,’ his brother says. ‘You keep those too.’

  Donato turns and looks to the west wall. Every weapon hanging there is damaged. Blades are snapped or dulled. Splintered and cracked.

  ‘They are all lessons,’ Donato says. He crosses to the west wall and puts his hand to one of the splintered blades. ‘This one was tempered in a weak flame.’ He moves his hand to the next. An axe, with a bowed edge and a crack in the face of it. ‘This one was quenched too soon. It makes the blade weak.’

  Donato puts his hand to the last of the swords. The most recent. It would have been a longsword, and a beautiful one, but it shattered halfway up its length the first time he used it in training. He remembers that the splinters cut him.

  ‘There was something in the steel of this one,’ he says. ‘It could never have done anything but break.’ He drops his hand away. ‘To discard them would be to forget them,’ Donato says. ‘And I do not make a habit of forgetting my failures.’

  ‘Nor your enemies.’

  Donato looks to his watchful brother. ‘You speak of Tur Zalak,’ he says.

  ‘You had faced him before,’ his brother says.

  Donato nods. He can feel the thrum of the Sanguine Tear through the floor of his chambers. It rattles the blades on the walls minutely. They sing a shrill, barely audible song.

  ‘On Perdicia,’ he says. ‘Fifty years ago.’

  ‘You were sent to kill him, and to save the world from damnation.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perdicia was saved, but you failed to kill Zalak.’

  Donato’s hand goes to his chest. It is an unconscious action. A bad habit. The old, knotted scar there aches as if it is made fresh. It always does, when he thinks of Perdicia.

  ‘I fought him alone,’ Donato says. ‘In a place that was sacred to Perdicia’s people, but that Zalak and his traitors had desecrated in the name of his false gods.’

  ‘The Temple of the Emperor Ascended,’ his brother says.

  Donato nods again, remembering. The temple was a ruin. Smoking, cracked and slicked with molten silver. Every surface was a shattered, warped mirror.

  ‘I had him,’ Donato says. ‘I had shattered one of his legs and broken his arm. Taken his staff from him. He was doing little more than crawling away from me.’

  ‘And then?’

  Donato frowns. ‘I could have fired on him to finish it,’ he says. ‘But instead I meant to crush him. To break him, as he had broken Perdicia, and her people.’ He shakes his head. ‘I was arrogant. Blinded by pride. I left myself open, and he struck me when I thought him already defeated.’

  That old scar aches again. The damage runs deep. Zalak had cut Donato to the hearts and escaped, leaving him to bleed all over the mirrored floor of the profaned temple. Even in that moment, as he had been close to death, the smell of the blood had
set the curse singing.

  ‘And in the shrine?’ his brother asks. ‘Did your pride blind you then, too?’

  ‘Blind me to what?’ Donato asks, coldly.

  His brother tilts his head, minutely. For the first time in a long time, Donato feels how it must feel to be prey.

  ‘Failure of a different kind,’ his brother says.

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  In the corner of Donato’s helm display, there is a red line tracking warp activity. It has been climbing since they entered the shrine. The closer they get to the summit, the steeper the line. The darker the path. The heavier the pressure of the storm that Zalak makes at the Crown. Donato feels it press against his mind as he advances up the marble steps, with his brothers in tow. Gunfire rains down on them from above from emplacements manned by cultists. It rings against his armour like rain on steel.

  On either side of Donato, blood runs down the walls, collecting on the steps until the pools grow too wide and it spills over to the next and the next. The stink of it surrounds him. Suffuses him. It sets the curse he carries singing more loudly than it ever has as he keeps pushing up the steep climb. It takes every ounce of Donato’s will to ignore the song of the curse. He thinks of training. Of deliberate, controlled movements, and the steadying of his hearts.

  He thinks of the message.

  This task is left to your Archangels, brother.

  ‘Do not falter,’ he roars. ‘Archangels!’

  They answer him in kind. Some over the vox, and some aloud. All of their voices are ragged with the strain of ignoring the song, but there is one that Donato barely recognises. One that sounds nearly animal.

  Sanyctus.

  His armour is blackened and burned. Cracked and trailing smoke from where it has turned aside the gunfire. He is snarling. Showing his fangs.

  The Archangels hit the top of the marble stairway, and hit the cultists too. The mounted guns are smashed aside. Bolter-fire thunders in the half-dark. But the cultists are not alone. There are creatures with them that have been called by the storm. Great, flayed hounds with jaws full of jagged teeth. They howl at the sight of the Terminators, and to Donato that too is another terrible, atonal song. One of the flesh-hounds leaps for him, and he fires on it with his combi-melta. The beam is searing white, an instant of light in the darkness. It punches through the daemon’s form and discorporates it before it can collide with him. The ashes that are left of it scatter across his armour, and then they too disappear.