Castellan

by David Annandale

  Drake hissed in anger at the sight of the Traitor. Crowe’s jaw tightened. New configurations of evil and excess took shape around the events in Algidus.

  The Noise Marine pointed at the Purgation’s Sword as it swung into view.

  Crowe leapt to the ground when the gunship was still fifteen feet in the air. Drake’s squad followed, and Berinon lifted off again, twin-linked assault cannons hammering the line. Two Wyverns and a Manticore exploded, consuming scores of heretics as they died.

  The Emperor’s Children had prepared well for this opportunity, Crowe saw. There were still enough vehicles to level entire sectors of Algidus. The Hydras chased the Stormraven with their shells as it retreated behind the towers further to the east.

  ‘Destroy the tanks,’ Crowe told Drake. ‘I will deal with the Traitor.’ He charged up the steps of the chapel, putting distance between his brothers and the Black Blade, and bringing the violence of purification to the heretics and the Noise Marine.

  The sword’s mockery snarled in his head. Run to the skirmish, warden. Wield your wrath and know it means nothing. You have already lost. There is no victory for you except through me.

  Militia soldiers rushed Crowe. They were so far gone in their foul rapture, they had lost their awe of him. The Noise Marine trained his weapon on Crowe. The vox maw of the gun and those of the Traitor’s armour gaped together, a foul choir about to sing. The Noise Marine fired at the same moment that Crowe loosed a stream of shells from his storm bolter.

  A base note to shatter bones and stone roared across the steps to Crowe. Bolt shells exploded when they hit the sound wave. The heretics foolish enough to come between the two Space Marines fell, their skeletons turned to powder, their eyes bursting from their skulls. Crowe charged through the blast. Blood filled his mouth. The sound hit him like a battering ram, but he was the stronger. He did not slow. He smashed through the sound. He kept firing, shredding militia, clearing his way to the Traitor. A few of his shells struck the Noise Marine. One of his pauldron vox-casters exploded in a heavy spray of blood. The Traitor fired again, and the rest of Crowe’s volley disintegrated, filling the air between them with fire. At point-blank range, the soundwave felt like the blow of a Dreadnought’s power fist. It smashed the rockcrete of the portico steps into a dust storm. Crowe hurled himself through thunder and flame, and thrust the Black Blade of Antwyr through the gorget of the Noise Marine. The blow severed the Traitor’s spinal column. His mutilated jaw sagged open and his body convulsed in a final spasm of sensation. The Traitor’s eyes glowed with pleasure. Then Crowe jerked the blade sideways and severed his head, sending it bouncing down the steps.

  As he turned from the shuddering corpse, Crowe became aware of the las-fire directed against him. The shots were futile against his artificer armour. He opened fire with the storm bolter again, sweeping it across the steps, bringing judgement to a vast swatch of heretics. Along the avenue, Drake’s squad turned Wyverns and Manticores into fireballs. Missiles and mortars detonated. A wall of fire filled the street to the left and right, consuming all life.

  In the space of a minute, the Purifiers ended the artillery attack.

  In the wake of the destruction, the avenue was a blackened ruin. Smoke rolled over it, the aftermath of a mass pyre. A few burned troopers crawled through the wreckage, moaning their last.

  At the foot of the chapel steps, a charred figure choked out a rasping cry and pointed an accusing finger at Crowe. ‘It spoke true,’ Vismar said. Her uniform hung in tatters. Her flesh was black and glistening, and her hair was burned away. One eye was gone, and the remaining one glared at Crowe with hatred, and with vindication.

  It? Crowe wondered. He descended the stairs, and Vismar’s gaze shifted for a moment to the sword before looking back at him with a mad, sly, unrepentant gleam.

  The disciples of truth are everywhere to be found, said Antwyr. Wheresoever I go, I will find them, and turn them to my ends. You are the means of my pilgrimage, warden. You spread my will.

  Crowe’s breathing turned into a frustrated snarl. What Gared dreaded was coming to pass. The coming of the Grey Knights was more than the trigger for the upheaval. It was the cause. Fanaticism and heresy were the results of their presence, and the Black Blade had worked its influence on the governor. The nature of the uprising had been determined, at least in part, by Crowe’s presence. He had a terrible vision of himself as a key unlocking the doors to catastrophe. With an effort, he crushed despair beneath his heel. He had expected the war to begin in this way. What mattered was how it ended.

  ‘You came only to kill us,’ Vismar spat. ‘And now you’ve done it.’

  There was truth in what she said, though it was only partial. Crowe did not correct her. She did not deserve enlightenment, and she was past listening. ‘You betrayed your trust and the Emperor,’ he said, raising the sword. ‘Your choices were yours, and so is the penalty.’

  Her bitter laugh was so strong it shook her frame and turned into a wracking cough. ‘I had no choice but death,’ she said. ‘But I do not die a fool. We fought back. The gods will mark this. We fought back.’

  ‘You and your labours are already forgotten,’ Crowe told her. He decapitated the governor with a quick chop of the sword. Her head rolled away, coming to a stop not far from the skull of the Noise Marine.

  Forgotten but not in vain, said the sword.

  ‘Berinon,’ Crowe voxed, ‘what are you seeing?’

  ‘The fighting is spreading out from the bombarded sectors, castellan. Justicar Styer and Knight of the Flame Sendrax report that the lines of the conflict are blurring. There is no longer a clear distinction between civilians and militia.’

  Or between faithful and heretic, Crowe thought. The battle was losing shape, becoming a generalised riot of death. The raging psychic energy in the city had not diminished. It was still growing. The Grey Knights had ended the artillery barrage, but they had achieved little.

  Perhaps we have achieved nothing at all.

  The thought felt dangerously close to what the sword wanted him to believe. It was also a possibility he had to consider if he would counter it.

  Antwyr’s laughter cracked through his mind. Crowe walled off the daemon’s mockery, and opened himself up to the agony of the city. He felt the energy forge death and hate and fear and murderous joy. He felt how close the breaking point had come.

  ‘Brothers,’ he voxed the strike force, ‘our efforts at containment have failed. We must prepare a counter-attack.’

  ‘Against what?’ Sendrax asked.

  ‘We will know very shortly. All units converge on the palace. We will hit back when–’

  The scream of sundered reality cut him off. To the west, the ravening light of the warp scarred the evening gloom.

  Chapter Twelve

  Apotheosis

  The Purgation’s Sword roared westwards over the burning towers of Algidus.

  ‘The abominations mock us,’ said Drake.

  ‘That is their nature,’ said Crowe. ‘But I feel the laughter of the fates this night, too.’

  The rift stabbed upwards from the centre of the Cathedral of the Saints Unforgiving. It had blasted a hole through the roof, and it reached up to the sky, a whirling torch of scabrous colours pointing at Desma as the planet ascended towards the zenith. Daemonic shapes emerged from its length, spiralling down towards the ground, a descent of monstrous angels.

  Why the cathedral? Crowe thought. The fanaticism that had erupted there was dangerous, but it was not heresy. Then he thought, Of course the cathedral. The psychic tension was not localised. He had felt no geographical spikes in its strength, only the gradual rise in power as the long day had given way to night. The rift could have potentially opened anywhere in Algidus. Striking the cathedral, though, was the perfect attack on hope and faith. It was a blow for despair and for greater frenzy.

  ‘At least we have the
real enemy in our sights,’ Sendrax said.

  ‘Do we?’ said Crowe. The psychic tension had not snapped. It was still intensifying, and faster now. ‘This is an escalation. I do not think it is more than that.’

  There was no doubt as to their strategy now. The Harrower and the Malleus Maleficarum were converging with the Purgation’s Sword on Saints Unforgiving. The full strike force would hit the daemons, smashing the abominations in their greatest concentration.

  ‘Closing this rift will not mean victory, will it?’ said Drake.

  ‘No.’ Crowe voxed all the Grey Knights. ‘Our position is unchanged, brothers. We must hold the battlefield, contain the damage, and hold off the enemy until we truly know what it is we must defeat.’

  Berinon slowed the gunship as it flew down the Boulevard of Holy Submission, heading towards the parvis of the cathedral. The ­Malleus Maleficarum was rumbling along the centre of the road, and the ­Harrower was coming into sight on the port side. Daemons swarmed out of the shattered doors of the cathedral. They descended on a crowd of the penitent that the Grey Knights had penned in at the square. The Crusader’s hurricane bolters made short work of the barricade of fallen rockcrete, and the tank smashed through the ruins of the hab block. A stream of daemons was already flowing over the rubble, spreading horror out into the wider city. Thousands of abominations had emerged from the rift, and the psychic pain of Algidus was climbing rapidly. Crowe felt it like a stiletto stab at the base of his skull. It joined with the snarls and venomous laughter of the sword.

  Your fate is written. Your path is chosen. Descend and fight and carry the Dark Gods to victory. There is no escape. Your hopes are merely the lures to your doom. I taste them, warden. I devour them. They nourish my vengeance. You will feed me until there is nothing left but your soul, and you will give that to me gladly.

  It seemed the tension must break, yet it did not. It climbed and climbed, the entire city on its way to transforming into a psychic volcano on the verge of catastrophic eruption.

  Cardinal Orla had gone as far as the primary Administratum complex before the Grey Knights attacked. The palaces of the Adeptus Administratum formed a rough oval around the Avenue of the Sixth Victory. The gunship had collapsed the curved wings of the buildings. Orla had stared in horror as twenty foot ferrocrete aquilas fell into ruin and dust clouds swept over the avenue.

  For hours, he shrieked his incomprehension. How could he atone for his apostasy if he could not spread the message of penitence? Weeping, he stumbled from one bottled up end of the avenue to the other. His robes were filthy rags, and he tore more and more violently at his flesh, opening up new wounds, holding his blood up to an uncaring sky. The dust settled, but the distress of the mob did not abate. Orla lashed at his back, and the people joined him in self-punishment. The broken palaces should have crumbled away before the power of the screams of faith. But they hemmed the faithful in. Orla ran and ran, half blind in desperation. Sometimes he stumbled over the bodies of the trampled. Bones snapped beneath his tread, but he remained upright, and a dim portion of his mind envied the dead, for surely they were now at the Emperor’s side.

  What if they are not?

  What if our penance is not enough?

  Night fell, and the world that had supplanted the moon rose like a dreadful eye. The test went on. Orla prayed for deliverance. He urged the people to still greater acts of penitence, whipping them himself when they faltered. An old man dropped to his knees in front of the cardinal. His bloodied arms went limp, and his head hung in exhaustion. His prayers fell to a mere whisper.

  ‘Cry to the Emperor, you wretch,’ Orla screamed, outraged. He could barely see through his tears of anger and terror. He struck the man with his whip. The man did not rise. His prayers stopped altogether. Orla lashed the man until he fell forward. Soon there was no more movement. Orla kept hitting the corpse as if his fervour would animate it to seek forgiveness.

  Then the terrible light, diseased with all the colours of vice and corruption, came from the cathedral. The sight stopped Orla in his flight. He stared, mouth opening and closing. Horror ran through his veins and filled his soul. The light turned the cathedral tower into a wavering silhouette. The sacred had become the unholy.

  The frenzy on the Avenue of the Sixth Victory changed in character. Terror and wonder took hold of the people. They turned in their panic to Orla, and for a long moment all he could think was that he had failed again. His sacrifice was still insufficient.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he finally whispered. The same plea he had been making all along. What else was there?

  His eyes fell on the corpse beside him. There was still death. That was the truest expiation. ‘The cathedral falls for our sins!’ he shouted. He ran south, towards the palace that blocked the way back to Saints Unforgiving. ‘We must take it back! We must die for the Emperor!’

  But there was no way forward. The interior of the palace had collapsed, and rubble filled the doorways. In the glow of the planet that filled a quarter of the sky, the palace was a shadowy, impassable mass. Orla beat his fists against the rockcrete. He could not climb. He could not enter. He and his penitent flock could not leave their prison to throw themselves into the battle against the enemy.

  They did not have to. The enemy came to them.

  The unholy had a form. It had many, and they came scrabbling over the roof of the palace. Orla staggered backwards as a cascade of monsters descended the wall. His ears were filled with the monstrous songs of a new choir. The notes were graceful and maddening. They reached into his soul and called on him to join in a dance that was perfectly depraved and perfectly vast. The monsters were the most foul and sinful of nightmares given flesh. They fell upon the people and tore them apart, and then Orla’s horror was completed when he heard the victims scream with pleasure.

  He covered his ears with hands slippery with blood. He roared his denial. He moved backwards from the growing massacre, then stopped. Blessed understanding dawned. This was a test. The Grey Knights had trapped him here so that he might, in the end, make full atonement and become a fitting offering. This was punishment, too, and judgement, and they, too, were fitting.

  Orla laughed, delivered from all doubt.

  ‘Father of Mankind!’ he yelled. ‘I hurry to you!’ He rushed forward, whirling his whip over his head. His violent joy radiated through his flock, and the penitent ran towards horror. Lithe creatures stalked over the ground to meet him, wielding lashes much longer than his. Orla laughed again, fear and joy and terror and desire fusing and annihilating the final shreds of rational thought.

  The singing monsters brushed aside his assault. They were laughing, too. Pincers closed around his limbs, and he died in an ecstasy of violence.

  The Stormravens and the Crusader hammered the parvis of Saints Unforgiving with a maelstrom of shellfire. The Grey Knights marched through a narrow gap between the blasts, a collective blade of silver-grey cutting through the crush of daemons. The impact of their boots cracked the flagstones. Crowe advanced through the vaulted entrance, storm bolter blasting monstrosities to a rain of flesh and ichor. The heavy bronze doors of the cathedral hung to the sides, smashed by the force of the daemonic flood. The interior was worse than a ruin. It was absolute desecration. The rift was centred over the altar, its marble slab lying shattered in two. The rift spun and pulsed, sending out forked lightning across the nave. Daemons poured out, rushing from the base and falling from on high. Their riotous celebration smashed pews and shredded banners. They clawed foul runes into the walls and pillars. Second by second, the cathedral was changing. It was no longer sacred to the Emperor. Soon it would be a stain upon the materium. Already, its walls were changing into a pale flesh, rippling with sighs.

  The daemons gibbered and sang at the sight of Crowe. He cut them down with sword and shell, hacking his way towards the rift. Behind him came the Purifier squads, purging a wider path through the abominat
ions. Styer’s squad took the right flank, Setheno and Furia the left. Furia had a small contingent of mortals in her service, hand-picked for their resilience in the face of the daemonic. Led by Klas Brauner, a veteran colonel once of the Cadian Shock Troops, they fought the abominations with grim tenacity. Their faces were rigid with horror, yet strong in faith. They advanced behind the inquisitor and the canoness. Setheno’s power blade blazed with holy anger. It seemed to leap in her hand, seeking to burn and slash daemonic flesh even faster.

  The combined forces slowed the stream of daemons leaving the cathedral to a trickle. Thousands were already loose in the city, but if the Grey Knights could seal the rift, maybe, Crowe thought, just maybe, they would regain that measure of control he sought. That control felt less like a tactical reality, and more like a symbol of hope.

  He was in the centre of the nave, less than ten yards from the rift now. The pulses of the warp pushed against him like waves. A daemonette lunged at him, striking with pincer and whip. It danced with reptilian grace away from his counterblow with the sword, then coiled the whip around the blade. The abomination yanked the whip, trying to pull the Blade from Crowe’s grip. He hauled back, jerking the daemonette forward. It hissed, leaning into the momentum and closing the pincer around his gorget. The limb began to smoulder at once, and the daemonette shrieked, burned by the light of Crowe’s sanctity. He blasted the monster’s skull apart with a single shot from the storm bolter.

  ‘Surround the rift,’ Crowe ordered. ‘We are strong together, ­brothers, and we will purge the abomination from this world.’

  You lie to yourself, said Antwyr. This gesture is empty. Your hope is empty. The claws of its will scrabbled against his defences.

  Drake and Sendrax moved in opposite directions around Crowe, pushing harder to encircle the rift. The vortex bent and twisted, as if reaching for the warriors. Styer’s squad came up behind Crowe and consolidated the position on this side of the vortex. Shells, flame and Nemesis weapons hemmed the emerging daemons in and destroyed their forms even as they entered the materium. The other daemons in the cathedral saw what was coming, and tried to break the circle before it was completed. Setheno and Furia pulled back and covered the Grey Knights’ rear flank, setting a continuous stream of fire across the nave.