Castellan

by David Annandale

  A moment later, the tower fell.

  The tremors of the blast raced across the continent. The earth heaved. Conatum jerked back, and its ruins fell in on themselves. The tower disintegrated like a breaking spine as it dropped. Ossidius and Livra plunged through a whistling, cracking storm of rubble. As he fell, Ossidius perceived the world as darkness and fire and thunder, and then there was the sudden, wrenching crack of pain that was not chosen, that was not art, that was simply the shattering of bone, the compression of organs, and the jagged explosions of nerve endings.

  Even then, as he lay broken on the heap of rockcrete, he admired the scale of the counter-attack. The music of its assault was magisterial.

  But it was the wrong music, working against a composition vast beyond measure. It had silenced the wail of the instrument. It must be defeated.

  ‘Livra,’ Ossidius called.

  There was no answer.

  Ossidius crawled forward. His left leg was gone below the knee. His ribcage was no longer a solid mass. There was a sucking movement in his torso, pieces of bone floating free. He had lost his sonic blaster. But he still had motion in his arms and right leg. So he dragged himself along like a serpent. He slid down the ruined heap. At the base, he saw one of Livra’s hands extending from beneath the tonnes of rockcrete. Its talons pointed to the ruins of the instrument. A wide pool of blood spread outwards from the rubble.

  Ossidius was alone, then. His mission had failed, but he would not accept the defeat of the great work. He believed in what Tarautas had revealed to him. He believed in the efforts that would bring an aesthetic of extremity to the galaxy undreamed of since the days of Fulgrim.

  So he crawled forward, leaving behind the twisted, silent remains of the instrument. The ground trembled from clusters of aftershocks. He dragged himself towards a wall of heat and smoke, and the remains of the daemon army. He could just make out the screams of rage from the servants of the Dark Prince. There were enough of them still to make themselves heard over the groaning rumble of the land. In the air, two glints of silver angled down at the daemons. There was the war he could not reach or fight. Nevertheless, he crawled towards it. The new sensations of his smashed body gave him the energy to keep moving despite his wounds. He pulled himself over the shaking ground, drawn by the paroxysms of the music gone awry.

  The Malleus Maleficarum descended from the ridge overlooking the devastated landscape south-west of where Skoria had once stood. It slammed into the flanks of the daemons, its hurricane bolters, assault cannons and multi-melta carving a deep path into the horde. The tank slowed midway down the trough of warp flesh. Its forward loading ramp dropped, and Styer’s Terminators stormed out to either side of the Crusader. They cut deeper into the ranks of the daemons, widening the path. Ahead of them, the Stormravens came in low, assault cannons on full, stormstrike missiles spreading waves of holy extermination. In the first seconds of attack, the Grey Knights scorched the earth for half a mile in every direction. The gunships dropped to a hover just above the ground, unloading the Purifiers from the side entrances, then rose again to circle the strike force hammering the daemons as they tried to counter-attack.

  The strike force hit the daemons as if it were moving back towards the site of the hive, only there was no destination now. There was only the need to annihilate, the direction of the Grey Knights’ formation shifting according to the concentrations of the daemons. The initial moves of the assault were devastating. The Grey Knights wiped hundreds of daemons from the surface of Sandava III. The success of the attack should have marked the beginning of the end of the war.

  This is the end, Crowe thought. He loosed a burst of shells with his storm bolter and charged through disintegrating daemons to plunge the Black Blade into the skull of a fiend that made the mistake of rushing at him with its head down. The Grey Knights had burned the sea of abominations. They had come down like a huge fist in the midst of the rest of the army, which had lost direction and was howling distress in the wake of the cyclonic torpedo’s detonation. Yet they had not altered the conclusion of the war. Uncountable thousands of daemons remained. The sea had burned, but it was still a sea, and Sandava III was held in the warp. The army would be replenished infinitely according to the whim of the powers that had taken the world from the materium. The Grey Knights were finite. The enemy was not. This was the end.

  You do not end here, said Antwyr. Destiny has come for you at last, and you will embrace what I offer.

  It seemed to Crowe that the frustration and anger that were as much a part of the sword’s psychic voice as malevolence were almost entirely absent. The Blade saw the moment of its liberation approach. It would corrupt Crowe to its bidding if it could. If it could not, it was content to bide its time. Antwyr, too, knew this was the end.

  The thought of inevitable defeat infused Crowe with a greater rage. He struck each blow for the Imperium, if it still existed, and for its memory, if it did not. He struck to mark his commitment to duty. He struck with the strength of his faith in the Emperor. That was unchangeable, a rock upon which even the Black Blade of Antwyr would shatter. No matter what the loss of the Astronomican portended, Crowe would serve the Emperor.

  ‘We are the hammer!’ Crowe shouted into the vox and across the battlefield, his helm amplifying his voice to thunder, to execution, and his brothers echoed him in desperate, righteous anger.

  ‘We are the right hand of the Emperor!’ they cried. Every Purifier and Terminator knew the end was here, and they fought in the faith that the Emperor’s eye was on their final actions.

  ‘We are the instrument of His will!’ Crowe boomed, and daemons burned at his approach. He was the purity of fanaticism, and he brought killing light to the unholy. The abominations rushed him and they recoiled. Daemonettes and fiends screamed in pain. They could not exist in his presence. He advanced into the sea of abominations, and the sea roiled in torment. The waves in the distance rolled in to crush him, while a tide receded with equal ferocity, fleeing this being whose mere existence was a terror and a doom.

  Crowe was the incursion. Crowe was the monster. The world belonged to the daemons, and he was the destroyer of the new order.

  ‘We are the gauntlet about His fist!’ the Grey Knights called. ‘We are the tip of His spear!’ Nemesis blades and storm bolters and heavy fire from the gunships and the Crusader turned abominations to ash and to pools of disintegrating flesh. The Grey Knights moved in three prongs, each squad a searing blade, striking deeper and deeper into the body of the daemonic host. They had no objective to save. Sandava III was lost. What they had was the determination to destroy as much of the enemy before the numbers finally told against them.

  A massive crush of daemons closed on Crowe’s position. It was a wave such as those that had smashed against the walls of Skoria. Scrabbling and leaping over each other, the daemons formed a nearly solid mass. No matter how many burned, they were determined to bring him down this time. They would crush the destroyer of Sandava III’s dark song.

  ‘I AM THE EDGE OF HIS SWORD!’ Crowe roared, and hurled himself forward to meet the wave. Silver, psychic light surrounded him. He was the light. He was the edge of the Emperor’s sword, and he would cut down all that was unclean. He rejoiced in the absolute certainty of his mission.

  You cannot win! the Blade screamed. You cannot win! You will kneel! You must kneel! If the end came now, then Crowe had been granted a rare boon. The sword was not triumphant. It was distressed. Perhaps Antwyr was even in pain.

  Crowe slammed into the wave, and he was a supernova. He was light purging the dark, wounding the dark, killing the dark. He was a flame of silver, a star cutting through a blackness suddenly unsure of its victory.

  The monstrous wave of daemons crashed over him. For the second time on Sandava III, he was submerged. The other Purifiers vanished from his sight.

  He burned more and more brightly, and though the thousands of a
bominations pressed closer and closer, they could not crush him yet, so quickly did he incinerate their being. He could not see individual foes. He fired and sliced through squirming darkness.

  And he saw the other light. It was a morning star in the night of flesh. It, too, was purity. It, too, was absolute. It was an exultation of hope, and his soul reached out for it. Light rushed towards light. The star he saw was not in the mass of daemons. He was not crossing a physical distance to meet it. He was traversing a much greater void. And the light came to him. It sought him as he sought it.

  Crowe’s body receded from his consciousness. A universe away, it swung and fought to hold its annihilation at bay. His awareness was in the light. He was the light. His streak of fire touched the blazing star, a comet meeting the dawn.

  And now the light was spreading. It broke over the surface of Sandava III. It enveloped the planet. It tore open the sky of the warp. Where reality had parted, now insanity was ripped asunder.

  There was a flash of even greater brilliance.

  For an infinite moment, Crowe thought himself at the heart of a sun.

  Then he was in his body again, emerging once more from a wave that had failed to destroy him. He climbed out of a hill of smouldering, twitching bodies. Half a mile ahead, his brothers fought on, bringing ruin to the ruinous. Further out, the host of daemons sent up a terrible lamentation.

  Crowe looked up. Night had come once more to Sandava III. Crowe could still see the mad fires of the warp, but now as a storm, not as the totality of existence. They did not fill the void. And in the void, there were stars.

  One of the stars was close. It moved steadily across the firmament. A voice came from the star, and sounded on Crowe’s vox. The voice belonged to the light that had pierced through to Sandava III. It was a voice Crowe knew.

  ‘This is Grand Master Voldus of the Third Brotherhood,’ said the voice. ‘We bring you deliverance, brothers. And we bring you hope.’

  Chapter Five

  Hope Renewed

  ‘This is the time of our greatest trials, Castellan Crowe,’ said Grand Master Voldus. ‘It is also the time of our greatest hopes.’

  They were in Voldus’ personal anchor hold aboard the Excoris Dominus. The chamber was small, spare, with a single iron pew, an altar and a table. The space was dark, conceived for reflection, prayer and meditation. The table had full hololithic and cogitator capabilities, however. The latest tactical data was, as often as not, the immediate subject of the Grand Master’s meditation. At this moment, the table displayed a map of the galaxy. Standing next to the pew, Crowe looked down at the new reality of the Imperium, and at the immense chain of warp storms that defaced it. The Cicatrix Maledictum, Voldus had called it. The horror stretched across the image, a bleeding wound cutting the Imperium in half.

  Crowe was still processing the implications of what had happened while Sandava III had been in the warp. The briefing Voldus had given his strike force had been full of news of such portent, it had been as dizzying as Gura’s last transmission from the Sacrum Finem. The siege of Skoria had lasted days, but years had passed in the materium. Years of endless darkness. Years in which the Imperium had teetered on the brink of absolute destruction.

  Voldus had then invited Crowe here, to speak more fully of the new shape of the Imperium. There was hope again. The Astronomican shone once more, though its light could not cross the barrier of the Cicatrix Maledictum, and half the former Imperium was still in darkness. There was also a new hope. It had the shape of a ­legend from the past. It beggared belief.

  ‘Guilliman has returned,’ Crowe said, listening to the sound of the words. Their meaning was huge. Simply uttering the sentence felt like an act of stunning import. A primarch led the forces of the Imperium on a new crusade against the Ruinous Powers. The Avenging Son, Crowe thought. After ten thousand years, he has come back to us. Crowe rejoiced. He also wondered what else might come back.

  ‘Guilliman is the light that has come in answer to our trial,’ said Voldus. ‘He is the answer that comes from the storm.’

  ‘As you were for us,’ Crowe said.

  ‘So it would seem.’

  The two Grey Knights were silent for a few moments, pondering the miracle they had accomplished.

  ‘Was it really by our actions that the world was pulled from the warp?’ Crowe said, broaching the event they needed to discuss.

  ‘I ask myself the same thing,’ said Voldus. ‘I have no other explanation. I saw the beacon of your soul in the storm. I sought to give aid to a brother.’

  ‘And so I saw your light.’

  ‘The explanation is simple, if hard to believe.’

  Crowe shook his head. ‘We truly do find ourselves in an age of wonders. And for my strike force, your passing through this region was a lucky one.’

  ‘A fated one, I believe,’ said Voldus.

  ‘Of course. So it must have been.’ He glanced at Voldus’ weathered face. The Grand Master seemed able to tolerate the sword’s presence far more than any other Grey Knight, but Crowe did not wish to subject him to the burden longer than necessary. Voldus looked calm, so Crowe decided to explore the circumstances of the strike force’s rescue a bit more. ‘I would like to know, then, what it was that brought you to Sandava.’

  Voldus frowned. ‘Sandava?’

  ‘Yes. Why come to this system? Has it become a focal point in Guilliman’s crusade?’

  ‘This is not Sandava,’ said Voldus.

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘Sandava is lost within the Cicatrix Maledictum,’ Voldus said. ‘We are not in any system.’

  Crowe felt the chill of premonition. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  Voldus turned to the table’s controls and called up coordinates. The position of the Excoris Dominus appeared in relation to the former site of the Sandava system. Crowe had been too caught up in the vista of the Imperium to notice the Sandava system was gone completely. A second rune blinked at Sandava III’s current position, just to the galactic south of the Cicatrix, due north of Golgotha, and hundreds of light years from where it should be.

  ‘You have travelled far,’ said Voldus.

  ‘We have,’ Crowe said softly. ‘Is there any significance to this location?’

  ‘None tactically. None that I can think of at all.’

  ‘There must have been significance to the journey, then.’ It was not unusual for ships to be lost in the warp and emerge almost infinitely far from their destination. A world being moved in this way was unusual. It could not be an accident. The purpose of the dark rhythm Gared had detected in the battles now became clear. Crowe had wondered where all the enormous psychic energy had gone. Now he knew. The siege of Skoria had become a dance, one whose power had been used to move the planet through the immaterium.

  But why? To where?

  Crowe felt answers hovering near, as close as the brush of fate.

  ‘Sandava III was moved for a reason,’ Crowe said. He was addressing his strike force. They had gathered on the bridge of the Excoris ­Dominus to witness the daemon-infested world’s end. From his throne in the strategium, Grand Master Voldus presided over the preparations for Exterminatus. Crowe stood on a wide dais one level below with the Purifiers and the Terminators. They were in the company of warriors of the Third Brotherhood, and the assembled looked out over the ranks of tech-stations, towards the main oculus. Sandava III filled the view, awaiting its execution. The planet was sunless, its only light the reflected glow of the warp storm. Bereft of its oceans, its land masses reshaped, Sandava III bore no resemblance to the world Crowe had first seen from the bridge of the Sacrum Finem more than a century ago. He had been a Knight of the Flame, then, come to fight the foreseen incursion on Sandava II. This was all that was left of that cursed, fated system. Soon there would be only dust.

  ‘Moved to what end?’ said Drake.

 
‘Precisely the answer we must seek,’ said Crowe.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Sendrax asked. ‘The journey has been stopped. Sandava III is going nowhere now except to oblivion.’

  ‘It does matter,’ said Crowe. ‘It is not enough that we interrupted the work of the Ruinous Powers. We must know the nature of that work. It would be dangerous to think we have severed the head when we have only removed a limb.’

  A servitor’s dead, monotone voice was mechanically counting off the moments to the launch of the cyclonic torpedoes.

  Crowe looked at Sandava III, and thought he could almost see the land writhe with the movement of the host of abominations. He wondered if the daemons knew what was coming. He hoped so.

  You would call this a victory, said the sword. It is not. What have you lost? Everything that you wished to save. The worlds are gone. All you have accomplished is to fill the void with blood. Perhaps that is what you wished? Was it? Was it? Was it? Battle for its own sake, blood for its own sake, the destruction of enemies for its own sake. You revel in it, Garran. You draw strength from it.

  The daemon assailed him with the reminder of his spiritual exhaustion on Sandava III. He had felt hollowed out before the battle at Labos. There had been so many echoes of Sandava II. The Ruinous Powers had attacked him with images of futility, as all his decades of battle had seemed to bring him back in a pointless circle to fight the same battles again and again. But that had been a lie, and he had been renewed in Labos. He would willingly stand on the spiritual ramparts of Titan, holding back the threat of Antwyr forever if that was what the Emperor willed. He was the castellan, and the burden was indistinguishable from glory.

  Antwyr was trying to turn the truth of his revived energy into a lie. He saw the attack for what it was, and countered it, knocking it aside.