Krixos seemed to sense his line of thought. ‘I take stewardship of the weapon,’ he announced, in a formal, final tone. ‘You may return to the Fortress and rest assured that–’
‘I will see this to its ending,’ Rafen spoke over him. A jag of sudden, sharp emotion lanced through him. A reluctance. Fear, even?
The Techmarine hesitated before finally giving a careful nod. ‘As you wish.’ The hissing, plodding servitor emerged from the open rail carriage with the container suspended between its lifters, and walked away on its pre-programmed course. Krixos fell into step behind it and Rafen followed.
They made the descent into the lower levels of the facility aboard a wide inclinator platform the size of a duelling arena. The slab of steel decking creaked with the resonance of massive wheels turning beneath their feet, falling slowly down the angled shaft on heavy rollers in guide channels cut from the stone.
Standing in the middle of the inclinator, the blank-eyed servitor had the mesomorphic build of one from a heavy-gravity world, densely muscled and stocky with it. The slave stared unseeing into nothing, a punch-card command unit implanted in his chest ticking with clockwork. Rafen watched it for a moment. It seemed wrong that this servile, this commonplace mind-wiped thing, was carrying the weapon to its repose – there should have been ritual and ceremony, great circumstance and chronicles being written of the moment. This was a homecoming, after all.
Instead, the duty was being undertaken almost without note, in the shadows, and that sat poorly with Rafen. So many men had died to bring them to this point, not to celebrate their sacrifice with parades and hymnals seemed like a cheapening of their honour.
But that choice was not his to make. The Council of Angels, Commander Dante’s personal assemblage of advisors and confidantes drawn from the ranks of the Chapter at large, had ordered it so. The Blood Angels had been gravely wounded; this was not the first time such a thing had happened, nor even the worst occurrence, but the circumstances of it were troubling. The shadow of civil war had loomed briefly over the Chapter, a horror not seen since the terrible days of the Horus Heresy ten thousand years earlier. Although the threat to unity had ultimately been exorcised, the shock of the possibility of such an event still resonated, and many of the senior officers among Rafen’s battle brothers wanted all mention of this incident burned away and cast from their history, cut out like a cancer.
Imprudent to deny it, he thought. The battle may have been won but the echoes of the aftermath are yet to fade.
‘Brother-Sergeant?’ He became aware of Krixos at his side. ‘As you are here, there is a question that occupies me.’
Rafen’s lips thinned. ‘I will answer if I can.’
‘What happened out there? At Sabien? We have been told very little. Many of my brother Techmarines did not return with you.’
He immediately thought of Brother Lucion, the eager and dedicated Techmarine he had counted as a kinsman. Dead now, dead because of an allegiance Lucion chose to a falsehood, never knowing it to be so. He banished the man’s face from his mind. ‘We were tested,’ replied the sergeant, ‘and we have endured.’
‘Indeed?’ He could tell that his answer was not enough for Krixos, not nearly enough – but the warsmith did not press him any further.
The platform descended for another kilometre before it ground to a juddering halt, and thick steel doors drew back to give them passage through the twenty-seventh sub-level of the Regio. The servitor ambled on, and Rafen felt his pulse quicken as he took in the sights around him.
They had emerged in one of the great arsenal chambers, where the armourers, swordmakers and gunforgers of the Chapter maintained the weapons of the Blood Angels. Below, though a gridded walkway, he could see workstations where robed figures bent over boltguns and missile launchers, tending to them with the care of a parent nursing a child. On the upper level, displays of venerable armaments lined the passage, many of them sealed away behind panes of bullet-proof ironglass or the shimmer of protective energy fields.
In this age of heretics and mutants, witchkin and aliens, every Adeptus Astartes was, in his own way, a living expression of the Emperor’s wrath. They were Angels of Death, one and all, figures that strode like legends across every battleground to oppose all who would threaten the safety of the Imperium. And where they walked, they were venerated. Rafen remembered worlds where the populace went to their knees to worship them as the Blood Angels passed by. He and his kind were avatars of the God-Emperor of Mankind, and their aspect, their armour, the very guns in their hands, these things were all sacred and holy icons.
He saw weaponry that gave the truth to that ideal. A bolter from the Alchonis conflict, heavily detailed with brass filigree and platinum scrollwork, gold-wired blood drops carved out of red jade dangling on votive chains from the pistol grip and the muzzle. A chainsword with a handle wrapped in tanned orkskin leather, each individual tooth on the blade laser-etched with a single word from the Litany Vermillion. And there, so close that it caught his breath in his throat to be near to them, twinned combat daggers that had been owned by great Raldoron himself, and the thunder hammer that had been in the hands of the battle-martyr Zorael at the moment of his death. He looked about him and saw the tools heroes had used to forge their legends over ten millennia of ceaseless war.
These were not just devices for killing, but works of devotional artistry. In their own way, they were just as virtuous as the bones of a dead saint or a sanctified book of prayer. Everything around him was a museum piece, the least ancient of them dating back to the time of the Scouring, some so old that they might have been from before the Age of Unification. And yet, there were no relics here, not in the true sense of the word. These were not fragile things suspended in time, to be gawked at from a distance and mused upon by the unworthy. Every single martial device here was battle ready, should the need be there to call it to duty. Each gun was loaded and primed to fire, each sword’s edge keen. This was an armoury, a gallery of lethal art – and there could be no more fitting place for the burden he had brought with him.
‘Here,’ said Krixos, halting before an empty alcove. This section of the corridor was deeper in shadow, lit only by a line of lumen strips in the ceiling. Something about the depth and the shade of the gloom troubled Rafen. It was so stygian that even his occulobe implants could not peer all the way into it. Krixos seemed not to notice and Rafen dismissed the thought, listening as the Techmarine transmitted a brief pulse of binaric linguacode in the clear. In response to the sound, a hidden seam in the alcove wall creaked and gave way, shedding drifts of accumulated dust. Beyond was a small, crypt-like space, dressed with a low altar that sported a series of stays clearly designed to fit the titanium container.
‘Brother-Sergeant Rafen,’ said Krixos, beginning the final formal declaration. ‘Your stewardship of this weapon is at an end. In the name of the Regio and by the authority of the Master of the Blade, I stand ready to accept it. Will you yield it to me, in perpetuity for the Emperor’s eternal reign, in honour of Sanguinius?’
‘I…’ Now at last it came time to say the words, Rafen felt the same knot of hard emotion in his chest. Once he had turned his back on the weapon, the last thread of connection between Rafen and Arkio would be cut. It was almost as if to give it up would be to give up his blood-brother’s memory. He frowned; he would never allow that to happen. Let it go, Rafen told himself. You have done your duty. ‘I will yield,’ said the Blood Angel at last, and his hands came up to his chest to form the salute of the aquila.
‘So declared,’ said Krixos, without comment on his momentary pause. He gestured to the servitor, and the helot advanced toward the crypt-chamber.
‘It comes home,’ Rafen gave voice to his thoughts. ‘After so long.’
‘Yes.’ The voice came out of the darkness behind them like an unsheathed blade. ‘The weapon is brought home by the last to draw blood with it.’
Rafen and Krixos both reacted with shock, th
e sergeant’s hand snapping at his holstered bolt pistol, the Techmarine’s servo-harness turning a lasgun muzzle to point at the source of the sound.
‘Fitting,’ continued the voice, as its owner grew out of the shadows, approaching them with a steady, measured pace, ignoring their unease. Rafen’s eyes met a sullen gaze framed by an ashen face. Black hair fell to the warrior’s broad shoulders and the hint of something – an air of forbidding threat – played around his lips.
‘My lord…’ Krixos’s tone shifted, and Rafen could almost imagine the expression of confusion on the Techmarine’s face.
‘I came to bear witness,’ came the reply to the unasked question. The new arrival halted before Rafen, and the Blood Angel refused to turn away as the other Space Marine’s unflinching gaze bored into his. He found himself looking into the eyes of a legend; or as some of his brethren would have it, a nightmare.
The gene-curse of the Blood Angels, the fatal flaw that was the legacy of their long-dead primarch, manifested in them as the Red Thirst and the Black Rage. Two sides of the same sorrowful coin, both combined to push sane battle brothers into a berserker madness from which no-one could return should their iron self-control ever slip. Rafen had touched the edges of the great fury himself back on Sabien, and the recollection of that moment still froze his heart when he returned to it. He had looked into that abyss, deep in his soul, and pulled back from the brink before it was too late – but many were not so lucky. The curse lay in the hearts of every Son of Sanguinius, Blood Angel and successor alike… and some fell far into that madness. Too far even for a last chance at redemption in the Death Company. When that horror claimed the mind and the soul of a battle brother, only the blade of the Executioner’s Axe was enough.
That blade lay at rest upon the shoulder of the warrior standing before Rafen, upon the one they called the Redeemer of the Lost, the High Chaplain.
‘I am Astorath,’ he intoned, and this time he showed his teeth. ‘Your name is known to me, Brother Rafen.’
Astorath the Grim. The name was a death-knell tolling in Rafen’s thoughts. Like the reaper-wraith myth from Old Night, Astorath was the Chooser of the Slain, forever voyaging the galaxy in search of those Sanguinius’s bloodline who had become lost to the Rage. He wore a suit of master-crafted artificer armour in blood-crimson, copper and gold. The plates resembled bunches of muscle, flayed of skin and shorn bare – Rafen had seen a similar design upon the armour of the psyker-lord Mephiston, but there the similarity between the two great Blood Angels ended. Where the Librarian was lit from within by an invisible sense of force, an ethereal aura that spoke of preternatural power, Astorath was bleak and shadowed. It was hard to quantify it, almost impossible to put into words… but it seemed as if there was a darkness clouding the air wherever the High Chaplain stood, a bitter and solemn ambience that stirred sinister memories in Rafen.
Strangely, a bolt of sudden anger raced through him and it took a near-physical effort for the sergeant not to snarl a question at Astorath. How many of my kinsmen have died by your hand?
The High Chaplain gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if something had been confirmed for him, and he turned to Krixos. ‘You wonder why I am here?’ He gestured in the air. ‘My wings. They were badly damaged during a clash on Kascol Trinus. I came to Baal to have Icarael’s Techmarines restore them to full working order.’
Rafen realized that the guncutter he had seen on his arrival could only have been The Fate, Astorath’s personal vessel. Yet it seemed so mundane to believe that the High Chaplain had arrived on the planet for something as minor as repairs to the black-winged flight pack he usually wore. Still, even without the dark arcs hanging over his shoulders, he still cut a formidable and daunting figure. The Blood Angel considered him. In many ways, Astorath was a harsh mirror-image of the ideal of their primarch, the antithesis of the exultant winged glory of Sanguinius. A balance of dark against the light, a living manifestation of the rage he was doomed forever to follow.
‘This matter is not of your concern, High Chaplain,’ the Techmarine was saying.
‘I want something,’ Astorath told them, ignoring Krixos’s words. ‘Before this rite is concluded.’ He nodded toward the container. ‘I want to see it.’
‘The weapon was sealed on the order of Lord Dante himself,’ Rafen insisted. ‘Your authority does not exceed his!’
‘Here and now it does, brother. And who are you to stop me?’ Before either of them could halt him, the High Chaplain pushed Krixos aside and stopped the servitor. Removing his gauntlet, Astorath tore off the seals and submitted himself to the bloodlock. To Rafen’s surprise, the container did not deny him, and slowly it arched open.
Wan, honeyed light spilled from the interior, banishing the shadows and the gloom. Every muscle in Rafen’s body tensed as the warm radiance touched him, gentle like sunlight on his face. The dark memories of Sabien stirred in him as Krixos remained rooted to the spot, still as a statue.
Inside the container was the weapon.
A spear made of golden metal, the haft was sculpted into a winged figure in a sanguinary high priest’s vestments, embossed with an ornate purity seal marked with the Emperor’s personal lightning-bolt sigil. It grew into a hollow-cored blade, shaped like a teardrop, and the metal seemed to emit a steady glow.
Lost in the chaos that followed the sundering of the Imperium during the Horus Heresy, passed into myth and legend for millennia until an expedition set off to recover it once and for all, the spear had finally completed its great journey across light-years, time and war. This was the weapon of a primarch, a weapon that, in defiance of all possibility, Rafen had wielded against the forces of the Ruinous Powers and used to dispatch a daemonic creature. This was the spear that had killed his sibling, a blade that long ago the Emperor himself had forged as a gift to his angelic son.
‘The Hasta Fatalis,’ whispered Astorath, a note of awe in his voice. ‘The Spear of Telesto. By the Throne, what a thing of beauty…’ He reached a hand into the container.
‘No–’ The word escaped from Rafen’s lips before he could stop it. ‘You cannot.’
‘You do not give me orders,’ Astorath replied, echoing Rafen’s earlier words back to him. The High Chaplain gently placed his palm on the haft of the weapon and Rafen saw him tremble slightly at the instant of contact. Astorath did not possess the preternatural insight of a psyker, but some said he had a peculiar gift of his own, an instinct that drew him to places where the curse of the rage and the thirst ran strong. Rafen wondered what Astorath experienced in that brief moment, coming so close to an artefact that had been made for the hands of their primarch and gene-father. Did he feel the same connection that Rafen had? The sound of blood roaring in his ears, like calling out to like? His memory of those feelings was transcendent and terrible, and not something he would dare to repeat.
Astorath’s hand moved to the teardrop blade and found something there, a faint patch of discolouration deposited on the golden metal. But how could that be possible? Rafen wondered. The blade burned off all stain of spilled blood, I saw it happen…
The High Chaplain brushed his fingers over the tiny specks of dried vitae and brought them to his nostrils. He tested the scent, licked at the dry powder; then he turned his gaze on Rafen again, measuring him. Somehow, he knows.
After a long moment, Astorath spoke again. ‘I have what I came for.’ He bowed reverently to the spear and made the sign of the aquila. His hand snapped up and slammed the container closed, the noise echoing like a gunshot. ‘Proceed,’ he said, turning his back on them to retreat into the long shadows.
Rafen watched him go, more uncertain than ever as to where his fate was leading him.
‘The High Chaplain’s presence here bodes ill,’ said Krixos quietly.
‘His curiosity seems to have been sated,’ Rafen offered, but without conviction.
‘Wherever he walks, the Black Rage is close at hand.’
Rafen eyed the
Techmarine. ‘It is his duty to seek it out.’
‘His presence brings it to the surface,’ Krixos countered. ‘Astorath causes good warriors to question their own truth wherever he goes. He brings doubt and mistrust in his wake.’ The Techmarine paused, cocking his head; Rafen knew he was listening to a vox channel relayed through his helmet. ‘Even now, word spreads of his arrival here. Every brother in the Regio cannot help but wonder who the executioner has come for.’
‘He said he was here for your skills, not for your heads.’
Krixos made a noise in his throat, a grunt of dry amusement. ‘He need not have come home to Baal for those repairs to be done. Any forge world of sufficient expertise would have sufficed. It is a pretext.’
‘For what?’
‘I dread to consider.’ Krixos looked away.
The servitor placed the container on the rack and backed out of the alcove. Automatically, the thick stone walls ground together. Rafen watched it happen, schooling his aspect to remain impassive. ‘It is done,’ he said aloud. ‘And so am I.’ The sergeant nodded to the Techmarine. ‘Warsmith, my thanks. I will return to the railhead and–’
Krixos held up a hand. ‘I have been informed that the razorwinds have struck the complex with deadly force. All transports have been locked down for the duration of the storm.’
‘How long will that be?’
‘Several hours at the least. A day at most.’ Krixos paused. ‘The Regio can offer you some sustenance while you wait…’
Rafen gave the sealed alcove one last look. ‘A dormitory room, then. Somewhere I can have some peace to rest and meditate.’
‘This way,’ said the Techmarine, leading him back to the inclinator.
The chamber they gave him was a sparsely-furnished cell on one of the habitat levels, little more than a stone box with a lumen globe in the ceiling, a bed and an icon of the Golden Throne impact-welded to the wall. Like everything else inside the Regio, the air within was dry in a way that seemed to deaden all ambient sound.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 54