Castellan

by David Annandale

  The Grey Knights entered the palace, crossing the threshold into a vast, oval hall. The ceiling was hundreds of feet high. It was supported by scores of pillars, thin as a man’s leg, bending and curling along their heights like entranced serpents. The walls of amethyst and opal were polished to a mirrored perfection. They reflected every movement in the space as huge, distorted, waving silhouettes. At each end of the hall, a spiral staircase swept up into the towers. The steps were two hundred feet wide at their base, but narrowed quickly as they curved upwards. In the centre of the hall, the inverted dome of the palace plunged down until it ended flush with floor level. Beneath it, the floor fell away in a steep, perfectly carved pit of smooth stone. A narrow staircase dropped straight into its depths, a steep plummet to damnation. From the rounded bottom of the dome, the lightning from the Catharsis blasted into the pit. Its thunder shook the walls of the palace every few seconds. The beats from the towers, more distant, were almost subdued by comparison. Yet they, too, rattled the spine and pounded at the soul.

  It seemed to Crowe that they were entering more than the palace. They were inside the song itself, though not yet at its heart.

  That waited for him below. He was certain of that.

  In the pit, on the staircases, hanging from the pillars, and thronging the floor of the chamber, the daemons of Slaanesh shouted and sang. The walls echoed with their celebration, but there was a hint of discordance. They were not perfectly in tune with the song that held the Angriff system in its grip. The breach of the palace gate had torn them from their revel. Their howls were defiant.

  At last, Crowe thought. At last, we are not welcome. We are a threat.

  He roared his challenge. He let the daemons know they were right to fear him and his brothers. Then he attacked, silver and light stabbing into the sanctuary of excess.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Music of Ruin

  The spiral staircase narrowed quickly. Soon after it entered the tower itself, there was barely room for two of Sendrax’s battle-brothers to fight side by side. The daemons were crowded in the spire, the mob so dense that Sendrax was sure they filled every bit of space to the top of the tower. Their numbers made it even more difficult for them to mount an effective counter to the advance of the Purifiers. They squirmed against each other, lashing out as best they could. Only their mass slowed Sendrax down at all. He felt that he was not fighting a war as much as he was carving his way through a single wall of daemonflesh.

  ‘This is not a struggle I will remember with pride,’ Klandon said. He dragged his Nemesis force sword through the torso of a fiend that had managed to lunge past Sendrax. ‘This is just manual labour.’

  Beside him, Letholdus fired upwards, catching a daemonette that had leapt up over the squad. The shells slammed through the daemon and against the next twist of the stairs. Stone chips and dust fell on the Grey Knights.

  ‘At least we need not be concerned about having our forces spread too thin,’ said Harsath. He was bringing up the rear, training his psilencer on any abominations that tried to follow. The gun channelled his psychic force into pulses. They took apart the body and essence of the daemons. The wake of the Purifiers was a slick of ruined bodies down the steps, a soft river of flesh.

  ‘We want nothing now,’ Sendrax agreed. He loosed a quick burst from his storm bolter, and carved out another few steps of passage between the daemons. Wounded daemonettes closed in around him, water flowing to fill a gap, and he cut them down with quick, angry slashes of his Nemesis blade. Their fallen pincers crunched under his boots as he moved upwards again. ‘But we have not reached our goal yet.’

  Freed by Sendrax’s open questioning of Crowe’s orders, Klandon said, ‘Is this even where we should be?’

  No, Sendrax thought, it is not. He said nothing. Despite his anger, he would not give voice yet to the extent he believed Crowe to be mistaken. We should all be attacking the centre of the palace, he thought. That was where the greatest application of force would be needed, and where the enemy would be found. He was certain of that. Crowe had sent him after a secondary target, keeping the glory of the real triumph to himself and Drake. His rational mind knew better than to believe Crowe had made the decision for selfish reasons. But the error was clear to him. His and Styer’s squads were being wasted. He wasn’t convinced sending Furia and Setheno to the Tyndaris was the best move, either.

  ‘We are where we are,’ he said. That was as much as he would say for now. ‘Where we should be is the top of this tower.’ He fired the storm bolter again, and lunged up another few steps.

  The squad moved on, higher and higher into the tower. Sendrax felt as if he were inside the artery of a monstrous being. The confines were so tight, and the climb so endless. The closer they came to the top of the tower, the more the beat from the warp lightning blasts sunk into his being. The walls of the tower pulsed with energy. It flowed upwards, drawn from the agony in the city and from the depths of the planet itself. Light of violet and bone brightened and dimmed with the rhythm of the daemon music. The tempo and the foul melody seemed more solid than the daemons Sendrax destroyed. It squeezed his mind and tried to seize his limbs. More than once, he caught himself firing the storm bolter in time with the song. He snarled at himself and at the influence.

  ‘Brothers,’ he warned, ‘govern your movements. Do not let the enemy’s art dictate them.’ He began to shout the Psalm of Extermination once more. He put the full force of his voice into the beginning of each line, fighting to create his own rhythm against that of the shattering beat of the tower.

  Sendrax was startled when the climb came to an abrupt end. A fiend threw itself at him, trying to knock him back down the stairs. Its howl was desperate, and when Sendrax slit it open along the entire length of its thorax, and it fell to the side, he saw why. It was the last of the daemons before him.

  The stairs ended at a vortex of stone. There was no door of any kind, only the wall endlessly spinning into itself and endlessly renewing itself. The contorted flows of the stone from the side walls and ceiling were unbroken by any seam. The thunder of energy blasts on the other side was deafening, and the pulses were so bright that the wall seemed as though it should be as warm and pliable as flesh.

  Sendrax fired a quick burst of shells into the vortex. They vanished into the storm, but their blasts triggered ripples in the spiral, and the movement stuttered. The barrier was strong, but it was not invulnerable.

  ‘I want melta bombs on this wall,’ Sendrax said. ‘Let us break through and have done with this unclean place.’ He struck the vortex once with the pommel of his sword. The stone began to vibrate. His blow rippled around the peak of the tower, and he heard movement on the other side. In the pause between the lightning blasts, there was a clink of chains, and a snarl.

  Perhaps we have a worthy enemy after all, he thought.

  He retreated a few steps while Letholdus and Klandon set the charges, then went down one turn of the spiral with the full squad, walking back through the butchered remains of the abominations. The tower stank of corruption. The heady, rotting perfume of indescribable vice hung over the disintegrating bodies.

  ‘Get us in,’ Sendrax told Klandon.

  The Purifier triggered the detonator. The tower above flashed with a pure and true light of molten destruction. Searing heat rushed down the staircase, shrivelling the daemon remains. At the sound of falling stone Sendrax started back up the stairs.

  Before he reached the top again, laughter came to meet him. Laughter that was eager and full of anger. Laughter that was familiar.

  In the near orbit of Angriff Primus, the void war began. The Tyndaris fired the initial volley. Shipmaster Saalfrank maintained a healthy distance between the Tyndaris and the Catharsis as he manoeuvred the strike cruiser into a position that brought its broadsides to bear on the stern of the enemy. The Emperor’s Children vessel did not move at all.

 
‘Surely they know we’re here,’ said Ambach.

  ‘They cannot move,’ Setheno said. Through the oculus, she watched the lightning gather along the full length of the hull, and then lash down from the centre towards the planet. ‘They need this anchor position.’ She exchanged a look with Furia.

  ‘So if they know we are here, they know how vulnerable they are,’ said the inquisitor.

  ‘And will have contingencies in place.’

  Saalfrank said, ‘The assault ram is prepared. It can launch as soon as you board, canoness.’

  ‘Then fire your guns, shipmaster,’ Furia said.

  The Tyndaris unleashed torpedoes, cannon shells and lance fire at the Catharsis. It was a killing salvo. Setheno counted off the seconds to impact, watching the streaks of wrath carve the void towards the enemy ship. The Catharsis’ void shields flashed with terminal brilliance on impact. The heavy lance fire strained them, and moments later the cannon shell collapsed them. Then the torpedoes hit. The attack was a triple hammer blow of destruction. Saalfrank had the luxury of choosing his position and his armament for maximum effect. It was an assault that would have turned a lesser ship into a ball of burning plasma. It should have crippled the Catharsis. It could have been enough to rupture its engines.

  Instead, though the void shields had failed, another force took hold of the torpedo explosions. The fireballs spread like fire on promethium, attenuating as they covered more and more of the strike cruiser. For a few seconds, the Catharsis became a torch. Then it seemed the flames were inhaled, sucked into the lower portion of the hull. They vanished as the lightning flashed again.

  This time it did not reach down to Angriff Primus. It struck the Tyndaris.

  The oculus flashed white. The vessel shook hard. Control stations erupted in warp flame, burning the officers and servitors in their vicinity. The walls of the bridge glowed, and the deck twisted, its surface writhing like a nest of insects. Klaxons screamed, cut off suddenly and the power stuttered, then came back with even more shrieking urgency. Saalfrank stiffened in the command throne. His cry of pain resonated with the groans of the hull, and he gave voice to the pain of the Tyndaris’ machine-spirit. The deck lost its warp taint and became solid again, but the shudders of the hull went on. Servitors began intoning damage reports. The monotony of their voices belied the severity of the vessel’s injuries.

  ‘Pulling back,’ Saalfrank rasped. The background rumble of the engines grew, and an angry vibration rattled the walls. The shipmaster was demanding a sudden, violent effort from the steering and the engines at the precise moment that they were least capable of providing it. ‘We cannot take a hit like that again.’

  Setheno and Furia were already moving towards the exit from the bridge.

  ‘Do not give the Catharsis reason to use that weapon again,’ Furia said. ‘If their position is so important, then so must be sending that energy below. Continue to retreat after we launch the Caestus. Preserve the Tyndaris, shipmaster.’

  As they headed down the corridors towards the launch bay, Furia mused, ‘What odds, canoness, that the assault ram will be able to pierce the enemy’s hull?’

  ‘If the Catharsis reacted, then it is vulnerable.’ Setheno contemplated the monstrous dance of the planets, and the necessity of disrupting the strike cruiser’s function. ‘We will board it if we have to tear the plates apart by hand.’

  The passage through the rift brought the Emperor’s Children to a chamber of overwhelming light. Above them, a sphere of blinding warp lightning formed and discharged, formed and discharged. Ten thousand tendrils crackled from the glowing walls, feeding into the centre of the room. In moments, they created a globe fifty feet wide. It was quasar bright, a concentrated essence of Chaos. It expanded to fill the chamber, and then it vanished, becoming the lightning that lashed the planets into their dance. The thunder came in the wake of each disappearance, and each concussion was a cataclysm. Tarautas gasped with grateful agony with each beat. He was inside creation. He was standing at the zero point of where a portion of the music came into being. The assault on his senses was so complete he was in a state of permanent ecstasy. He would do everything to preserve this state, and to see the triumph of art.

  There was no exit from the chamber. It was a perfect hemisphere. The rift had closed as soon as it had brought the warband to this spot. For Gothola, the light was too massive a shock. His cultivation of the senses was too crude. He retreated from perfection, and fixated on the sealed room. ‘You have betrayed us!’ Gothola shouted, and leapt at Tarautas’ throat. It was a reckless, clumsy jump, and Tarautas countered it easily. He sidestepped, seized Gothola’s arm and hurled him to the floor. He pinned Gothola down, and jabbed his narthecium drills in a warning against his neck. ‘You are not betrayed, brother,’ he said. ‘We are rewarded.’ He did not wish to anaesthetise Gothola. Not now. At this moment, they should all share in the immensity of sensation.

  And he had no doubt they would soon be called upon to defend the sublimity they beheld.

  Utheian and Belagas were silent, transfixed by the rhythmic creation of the sphere. Casca, whose faith was the strongest, was on his knees, arms upraised as if he might embrace the sphere.

  ‘Look upon the glory,’ Tarautas commanded Gothola, and pulled him up, still keeping the narthecium at his neck. Tarautas turned Gothola’s face towards the sphere. ‘Look!’ he cried.

  Rebirth followed thunder. Thunder followed rebirth. The music sounded, and a system revolved at the behest of art.

  ‘This,’ said Tarautas, ‘is what we have come to defend. And we will be called upon. The Grey Knights in their dreary faith will come to destroy the glory. They will fail. We will witness the triumph of the empire of the senses. But we must preserve this art. Do you understand, brother?’

  The chamber flashed and darkened. Thunder exploded. The colossal rhythm worked upon Gothola. He began to nod, slowly at first, then with true conviction. He saw and understood, and he was ready.

  Tarautas released him. ‘Brothers,’ he said, calling them away from their rapture. ‘Check your weapons. As surely as we have been summoned here, the enemy will come.’

  The Grey Knights proved the truth of his words a few moments later. A portion of the flawless wall glowed with angry, blinding spots. It began to melt.

  ‘Now we fight,’ Tarautas said. ‘This is our time. Destroy the enemies of art.’

  The moment the melta bombs broke through the wall, a hail of bolter shells and a wave of sonic destruction blasted out of the chamber. The blistering assault screamed over Styer’s head as he tried to climb the stairs to the level of the breach. Confined by the walls of the tower, the opening was narrow, though with his eyes at the level of the floor, Styer could see that the peak of the tower bulged. The chamber beyond was large.

  Styer ducked back down. The torrent of fire did not abate.

  ‘They can keep this up for a long time,’ he said. ‘I estimate a squad’s strength.’ If positions were reversed, he would be able to hold the position. The breach was small, and there was no other access possible.

  Immense flashes from the chamber immediately preceded each lightning blast. Gared gazed past Styer. His eyes were focused on a vision beyond the wall. ‘This is a node of power,’ he said. ‘The evil that holds the system draws part of its strength from this point.’

  ‘No one questions the need to take it,’ Vohnum said. ‘The question is how.’

  ‘We need a second breach,’ said Tygern.

  ‘If you can summon more wall for us, brother, I will follow you gladly.’

  Styer moved a few more steps down, out of the line of sight of the defenders of the chamber. He placed his gauntlet against the wall on his right. ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the outside wall,’ Vohnum objected.

  ‘I’m aware of that, brother. Get us through it.’

  Styer pulled the rest of t
he squad down another spiral while Vohnum applied more demolition charges. When the melta bombs broke through, wind screamed down the staircase. Styer moved up and took another bomb from Vohnum. He shouldered his force hammer, maglocking it to his back. He grabbed the still-glowing edge of the breach and leaned out into a night of thunder and fury. A vista of the ravaged city stretched out to the horizon. The smoke of countless fires coiled upwards. The jagged fissures cutting through streets and buildings formed a web of devastation that invited the gaze, threatening to turn into a pattern, and then into dark meaning.

  Styer turned away from doomed Algidus and looked up at the curve of the hemispherical chamber above, gauging how far he could leap.

  ‘I will open a second front,’ he voxed the squad. ‘Gared, you will create a third.’

  ‘Understood, justicar.’

  ‘Begin now.’ Styer triggered the melta bomb. Below, the warp energies gathered around Gared. Styer counted down the seconds to its detonation, then hurled the bomb at the chamber’s wall. His target was at least ten feet to the right of the existing breach. The difference was not great, but in conjunction with Gared’s strike, it might be enough.

  The melta bomb exploded as it hit the wall. Styer leapt towards the flash. He fired his storm bolter as he flew. The wall fell away before him and he landed inside the chamber with the stone still flowing. In the same moment, a warp tunnel ripped through the materium and Gared materialised at the rear of the chamber, behind the warband of the Emperor’s Children.

  One of the Traitors was already reacting to Styer’s breach. Sound, transformed into a ravening thing, hit him like a battering ram. It threw him back, and he barely managed to shift his mass and fall sideways to avoid going out of the breach. But then, standing beneath the appearing and disappearing sphere of warp energy, Gared opened fire, pulling more of the enemy’s attention.

  The Emperor’s Children lost their focus. Vohnum and Tygern sent their counter fire through the breach. Styer sprayed the warband with shells. Tygern lunged. Bolt shells caught him in chest and shoulder, spinning him around. His Terminator armour saved him from death. He took the blows and the wounds, acting as a shield long enough for Vohnum, Gundemar and Ardax to burst into the chamber.