Crowe cut him off. ‘Who any of you are is of no consequence to me.’ He took a heavy step forward. Mihok and the nobles retreated before his shadow. Their backs were to the dark entrance of the chapel. There was dim light inside, the low red of wall sconce lumen globes. It was a glow that called to prayer, that demanded reflection these men and women were not capable of, and so they stopped on the threshold of the chapel, unable to retreat any further, too terrified to gaze upon Crowe. They hunched their shoulders and looked away, but before they did, their eyes fastened for a few seconds on the sword he carried, and they grew even more frightened. They could not know what the Blade was, but they felt the touch of its malevolent spirit. Perhaps they believed now that doom had come for them after all, and all that remained for them was to learn the nature of their damnation.
Crowe turned from them. He advanced to the lectern. It was built for mortal speakers, and barely reached his waist. It served his purpose all the better by further emphasising how puny and fragile the lords of Skoria were beside the Grey Knights. Crowe opened a vox link to the pulpit. The delegation had imagined he would speak to the people of Skoria, and so he would.
In the unholy light of the warp, the sanctity of the strike force was visible. A cold, white, psychic nimbus surrounded each of the Grey Knights. They shone with the iron of angered faith.
‘What are you?’ Crowe thundered to the masses. ‘Do you call yourselves faithful to the Emperor? Do you?’
He paused. He would have an answer. These people would know they were being judged, and there could be no retreat into silence.
‘We do!’ someone shouted.
‘We do,’ said the cardinal. He scuttled forward as if he meant to touch the hem of Crowe’s cloak. Crowe turned his head with a sharp jerk, the point of his visor aimed down at the little man. The cardinal recoiled as if stabbed.
The rest of the crowd took up the cry. ‘We do!’ It was still a wail, just as desperate as before, a plea that he believe them and forgive.
Crowe was not in a mood to do either. ‘Your words mean nothing,’ he said. ‘Your actions prove them to be empty. Your faith is in your actions. Where is it? What are you? Will you hide in your burrows when the enemy comes? Faith is not faith that crumbles when tested. You imagined that we came to save you. We did not. We fight the abomination. We fight for the Emperor and the Imperium. If you do not fight, there is no salvation. You will earn your place at the Emperor’s side, or you will find your deserved oblivion.’ He raised his right hand, blade and wrist-mounted storm bolter pointing to the unholy sky. ‘I am the right hand of the Emperor!’ he roared, and in his anger he burned with terrible light. Then he lowered his voice to a frozen, implacable hiss. ‘And I would know what you will do.’
There was a moment of terrified silence. Then new shouts began. ‘We will fight!’ ‘We stand with the Emperor!’ ‘Our lives for the Imperium!’
‘We will fight! We will fight! We will fight!’
The cries were as desperate as ever, but the need had changed. Now it was the need of the people to convince Crowe that they were still faithful. It was also genuine. The citizens of Skoria had looked upon the light of the Grey Knights, and knew that the Ruinous Powers were not supreme.
On a private vox channel, Drake said, ‘They do not understand that none of them will survive.’
‘I think some might,’ Crowe said. ‘But you’re right. Most don’t. What matters is that they will die in the Emperor’s light.’
Drake didn’t reply. The unspoken question hovered between them, too terrible to articulate, fit only to be crushed under the boots of undying faith, and yet as present and inescapable as the monstrous sky.
The question was still in the back of Crowe’s mind a few hours later, as he kept watch over the salvage operation at the wreck of the Sacrum Finem. The Grey Knights had led a workforce thousands strong from Skoria, and the mortals laboured to haul ordnance and weapons back to the hive. The ruin of the bow bulked high over the land, a ragged grave of metal. He stood in the shadow of the huge tomb, watching the workers swarm up the exposed decks. A steady stream of transports carried shells and torpedoes across a landscape that twisted and screamed. The Stormravens flew high overhead, surveying the region, watching for the first sign of an enemy’s approach. Grey Knights rode escort with the transports on the journeys to and from the hive.
Sendrax approached Crowe as a massive tracked crawler rumbled past him, the barrel and housing of a cannon loaded onto its back. The vehicle and cargo were the size of a small hill.
Sendrax stopped a few paces away from Crowe. He had removed his helmet, and his face showed the strain of being so near the Blade. He looked like a man swimming against a tide. ‘A good salvage,’ he said, gesturing at the crawler.
It would take hours for the monster to reach Skoria, but the prize would be worth it. ‘Techmarine Bray thinks he can get the gun working on the wall, then?’ said Crowe.
‘With the assistance of the hive’s tech-priests, yes, he does.’
A chorus of screams rippled over the land from the south. They did not come from any human throat. There were new formations in the rock. Tall, twisted cylinders whose tops ended in slow, crumbling lips. They shrieked in answer to the pulsations in the sky, the warp and the warp-tainted speaking to each other.
‘I’m surprised the daemons have not come yet,’ Sendrax said.
‘So am I.’ But the thought had occurred to Crowe, too. The purging devastation of the wave could not last. Sandava III was caught in the warp. Sooner or later, a new, greater invasion would begin. Yet the humans on Skoria were being given time to prepare. The longer the daemons waited, the better the Grey Knights would be able to plan for the siege.
‘Perhaps now that we are in their domain, there is no rush to conquest,’ Sendrax mused.
Crowe shook his head. ‘That crossed my mind, too, but I think it credits the enemy with too much foolish arrogance. The Ruinous Powers are anything but foolish.’
‘True,’ said Sendrax.
‘If the daemons wait to make their presence known, they wait for a reason. If they choose to let us fortify Skoria, then they do that for a reason, too.’
‘In which case we play into their hands.’
‘Do you see a different course of action open to us?’
‘No.’
‘No. So we will do what we must, and wage war with such fury that their machinations will fail. We will prove them arrogant in the end, brother.’
‘In the end…’ Sendrax repeated. ‘What is the end, I wonder?’ He was coming perilously close to enunciating the unspeakable question. The Astronomican has gone out. Gura’s words were full of monstrous implications and possibilities that had to be denied at any cost. ‘What can be our victory?’ Sendrax asked, coming right to the edge of the question, but still holding himself back from speaking it.
The Astronomican has gone out.
Crowe knew what that could mean. They all knew. Yet his faith would not allow him to admit the worst was possible. Nor would Sendrax’s. To admit it would be to fall prey to the worst of heresies. No Grey Knight had ever been so corrupted, and no Grey Knight would be so now.
But Antwyr spoke the lie. The Blade had been whispering and shouting the blasphemy ever since the fall of the Sacrum Finem. He is gone, said Antwyr. The Emperor is dead. This is the truth, and you will embrace it. Accept your fall, and rise again with me.
‘Our victory,’ Crowe said, ‘is to fight. And to keep fighting.’ That had been the nature of all his victories since he had first grasped the hilt of the sword.
Sendrax glanced at the Blade. He nodded solemnly.
From the west came a long howl of hunger and challenge. It was distant, audible only because it came from so many throats. It was not the scream of the land.
‘Now they come,’ Sendrax said. ‘Perhaps they heard me.’
&n
bsp; ‘They announce themselves,’ said Crowe. ‘They are giving us a distant warning of their arrival.’
‘You were right. They want us to be ready.’
‘Then we won’t disappoint them.’
Chapter Three
The Long Siege
The fires were out in Conatum. There was nothing left to burn. Trails of smoke still rose like desultory phantoms from the ruins. The gutted structures of the hive clawed for the sky, talons of blackened iron and crumbling rockcrete. The war had taken all the flesh of the city, and left a stripped carcass behind. The scythe of the daemonic had swept through utterly, and the Imperial forces had never set foot inside its walls. Ossidius had caught a glimpse of the Grey Knights in the distance, heading for Skoria. They had not diverted their march for a lost cause. The deluded, self-righteous servants of the Emperor had no idea the Emperor’s Children watched them, and continued the work that had begun with the initial incursion on Sandava III.
Conatum was certainly lost, but the corpse yet twitched in its depths. Not all the mortals had been killed by the daemons and carried off to form the causeway. Many lived still, though they spent their hours praying loudly for death. There was amusement to be had with them, but they were needed for the construction of the instrument. The restriction frustrated Livra, and Ossidius let him have just enough playthings to pacify him and keep him focused on the task Tarautas had given them to perform when he had sent them to this world.
There was music to be made, and the Noise Marines were hard at work.
The instrument was rising from the centre of a massive hab complex. When the Grey Knights had passed, it had not yet grown past the tops of the towers. Now it had. It was stretching for the violent sky, as if summoned to enthusiastic growth by the triumph of the warp. A cluster of hollow, brass tubes, rearing like angry serpents, surrounded twin coils more than a hundred feet high. The device was not complete, but it was already active. Lightning struck coils periodically, and coruscating energy crackled up and down their lengths. The wind blew through the openings in the tubes, and the music rumbled forth, a sinuous, throbbing wail. It swirled against the ruins of Conatum and plunged its claws deep into the bedrock of the city, sinking down to resonate with the planet’s core. The music would guide Sandava III to its purpose.
Ossidius stood at the peak of one of Conatum’s last spires. The tower jutted out of the ruins in the far eastern sector of the hive. The structure leaned, a crooked finger a thousand feet high, pointing towards a vast plain of screaming rock. Across the plain, the daemons flowed. The army of the Dark Prince was an unending flood. It had begun its passage days ago, and there was no end in sight. The instrument was to their rear, just visible now when they turned around, but present in their minds and souls.
From over the horizon came the strobing glow of explosions and the distant hammer of warfare. Ossidius latched on to the glimmer and song of battle, drawing inspiration. There was fine atrocity occurring at Skoria. As far away as the conflict was, it was the closest he had been to the proper slaughter in the field since he and Livra had arrived on Sandava III. The mortals had presented no challenge. There had been some pleasure in corrupting the population and opening the door to the incursion, but the process had been too effortless.
There was a true struggle at Skoria, one that refined the pleasures of blood, and made them stronger. The scale of the battle offset the distance to a degree. Ossidius listened and watched from his tower, and he tuned his instruments to match the symphony of carnage. He fired his sonic blaster, matching the beats and keys of the gunfire. The Grey Knights had some gigantic cannons at their disposal. The speakers on his armour’s power pack amplified the cries of the daemons, linking the sounds to his nerve clusters. Hollow bone spurs grew from his upper arms, piercing through the armour. Whistling chords sang from their broken ends. The music of his sensation issued from the bones and melded with the composition he forged from the echoes of the far war.
The nuances of brutality scraped over his senses. There was a massacre taking place. Ossidius did not know who was getting the worst of it. He didn’t care. It was the exultation of murder through sound that mattered. Destruction reached across the miles to become part of his shrieking art. He savoured the violence he discerned. He wished he could be closer, and feed on every drop of agony. But he knew his duty. The war shaped his music, and his music, booming across Conatum, shaped the pain of the slaves. Their pain drove their actions, and in turn controlled the building of the instrument. From his position, he was commanding the destiny of Sandava III.
Livra marched up the stairs and onto the rooftop of the spire, interrupting Ossidius’ concentration. Livra watched the flashes of the war for a moment. ‘How can they still be fighting?’ he asked.
Ossidius growled in irritation. Livra’s appreciation for the sensations of noise was limited. He had taken the path of the flesh. He was a hulking thing of swollen muscle and pierced, flayed skin. His hands were far more dextrous than his size suggested. He worked on canvases of blood and bone. He had been working his art on the slaves, encouraging their labours with direct action. The talons of his gauntlets dripped crimson. He was restless, frustrated with his poor material. The war at Skoria was of no benefit to him.
Livra pointed to the vast river of daemons flowing east. ‘Such an army should have been enough to overwhelm that hive days ago,’ he said.
‘That is not the goal,’ Ossidius pointed out. ‘The instrument is not yet complete.’
Livra growled. ‘I’m bored. The prisoners are weak meat. Why aren’t we fighting at Skoria?’
‘That is not our role yet.’
‘According to whom? Tarautas isn’t here to enforce his will. Who is in command of the daemons? There has been no leader since Varangallax fell.’
Ossidius looked up at the sky and its triumph of ruin. ‘Oh, I think there is someone in command.’
Livra was not satisfied. ‘If there is, they have forgotten us.’
‘We have not been forgotten. We are engaged in a great work.’
Livra shrugged. ‘I don’t know what it is for, and it is not of my own creation. That isn’t good enough.’
Livra was a poor artist, Ossidius thought. His work and his gratifications were all in the immediate. He had no conception of the greater art and the more sublime sensations that could come from it. Tarautas did, which was why Ossidius was willing to follow him. Ossidius seized the experiences of the moment, but he looked to future ones, too. ‘Be patient,’ he said. ‘Nourish yourself on the prisoners. Drive them on. A great symphony is being formed. We shall have sensations, brother. Tremendous ones.’
In the throne room of the governor’s palace on Algidus, the Canoness Errant towered a good two feet over Governor Lina Vismar. The tomb-grey of Setheno’s armour stood out like a rebuke to the gold inlays of the floor and ceiling, and the rich violet of the tapestries. The history of the Vismar family seemed so much brittle vanity in the presence of this figure.
‘Is it understood, then?’ Setheno asked. She had removed her helmet. Her face was paler than snow and colder than ice. Worse yet were her eyes, an abyssal gold that looked through Vismar’s soul and found it wanting. ‘Order will be maintained on Angriff Primus.’
‘We will do what we can,’ Vismar began. ‘But if the Imperium is lost–’
‘I did not ask for your opinion, governor. Nor do I accept any equivocations. I asked if you understood.’
‘I do, but–’
‘Then I will expect to see my commands carried out,’ Setheno said, and strode out of the throne room.
Fear and bitterness clashed in Vismar’s heart. If she focused on the anger of wounded pride, she might be able to keep her mind off the thoughts of doom that surely must be coming for her world. She might be able to keep herself from screaming in despair. She turned to Cardinal Paulus Orla, who stood next to the throne. He was staring wi
th undisguised terror in the direction the canoness had gone.
‘Why did you summon her here?’ Vismar hissed.
‘I called for the assistance of the Adepta Sororitas. I did not imagine she would come.’
‘But who is she?’
The canoness issued orders with an assumption of authority that Vismar resented, but instinctively knew better than to challenge.
‘She was once the canoness of the Order of the Piercing Thorn.’
‘Was?’
‘Something happened. I don’t know what. But the Order was destroyed.’
‘And she was not disgraced?’
‘To the contrary. She became Canoness Errant. She was on Antagonis, and Armageddon, and…’ Orla shook his head and shuddered. ‘I did not imagine she would come,’ he repeated.
‘What does she expect of us?’ Vismar muttered. ‘To fight back against the end times?’
‘Yes, if that’s what she demands. I won’t be the one to disobey. Will you?’
Vismar did not answer.
The daemons crashed against the walls of Skoria in waves. Huge masses of abominations clawed over each other in their efforts to reach the ramparts. Rockcrete trembled from the impacts of so much warp flesh. Psychic fires bathed the faces of the walls, mutating the surface, weakening the integrity of the battlements. Skoria’s militia and the conscripted citizenry lined the full length of the ramparts. Crowe had commanded that not a single square foot be left undefended. Every hour of the war, hundreds of the mortals collapsed in gibbering, terrified madness, their sanity unable to withstand the sight of the infinite numbers of abominations. They were replaced by the next line of desperate warriors. They were driven as much by their need to prove their faith to Crowe as they were by the desire to protect their city. Crowe saw them look to him for approval when he passed. I should not be the reason you fight, he thought. But they were fighting, and so they would die in the light of the Emperor’s grace. He could offer them no more than that. He could not promise them any kind of survival. And so he nodded to the mortals, giving them the approval they sought.
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