Warden of the Blade Page 10

  ‘You would deprive us of a battle?’ Carac asked.

  ‘I do not like to disappoint you, brother. But this course of action seems to me inevitable.’

  ‘We must find the relic and burn the root of this infection,’ Crowe had reminded Destrian. ‘Too much can disappear in a bombardment, including that which would use the destruction as a cover for flight.’

  He understood Destrian’s reasoning, though. There was an aspect of futility to the ground war. There was little that could be done, in the end, for the people of Egeta. That was not Crowe’s concern. Even so, he saw the loyalty and bravery in this hall. He would see more in the streets, he was sure. He could not offer these people salvation. He would grant them remembrance instead.

  The Purifiers’ initial attack had been enough to slow the advance of the daemons. They had blunted the invasion, and at length forced the daemons to regroup. The abominations had pulled back across the riverbed. The militia’s artillery appeared to be holding them in the east again for the moment. The respite would not last long, but it had been enough for the inner wall of the palace district to be reinforced by many guns and thousands of infantry, and for some planning to take place.

  ‘They will come again,’ Vendruhn said. She, the Lord Governor, Crowe and Sendrax surrounded the central tacticarium table. The hololithic display showed an overview of the entire city.

  ‘Yes, they will,’ Gavallan said. He stood at the far end of the throne room, dozens of yards from the others. If the mortals wondered about his isolation, they did not ask about it. ‘The question is whether they can be held at the wall.’

  ‘They can,’ Otto said, with all the determination of a man who believed he could will reality to do his bidding. He had the look, too, of a man who had gazed upon something that had overwhelmed him, and was now eager, in its absence, to prove himself still strong.

  Vendruhn was slower to answer. ‘With half my complement of troops…’ she said, weighing the variables. ‘And our combined assault drawing the enemy’s attention…’ She bowed her head. ‘Yes, lord,’ she said to Gavallan. ‘The wall will be held for as long as necessary.’

  Crowe looked at Vendruhn with something almost like pity. She did not realise that the assault was not the distraction. The palace district was. It was the bait, splitting the daemon force to give the Purifiers the chance to breach the cathedral.

  ‘I could be even more certain of our position if you were commanding the defence,’ Otto said to Vendruhn, slipping from the confidence of his office and into the concerns of a human being.

  ‘No,’ said Vendruhn. ‘I won’t wait for those things to come to us. I’ve had enough of retreats. I will march with the Grey Knights.’

  Crowe caught her slight hesitation before the last two words. She was wondering about this Chapter she had never heard of before. She had questions. She would not get answers. It was enough of a privilege for her to know what force had come to her world. She would not enjoy that privilege for long. But if it gave her more strength for the struggle ahead, then well enough.

  ‘Our overflights of the cathedral sector show large numbers of heretics still present,’ Gavallan said. ‘They are the conduits through which the abominations enter the materium, but they are also a corrupted army in their own right. It will be the responsibility of General Glas’ forces to destroy them.’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Vendruhn.

  ‘Could there still be untainted citizens east of the river?’ Otto asked.

  ‘There may be,’ Crowe said. The point was moot.

  ‘They are all fallen,’ Vendruhn hissed through a clenched jaw. ‘If they were not, they would be fighting. They will be exterminated with the others.’

  Crowe’s eyes narrowed. He did not precisely disagree with what Vendruhn had said. It was her tone that drew his attention. There was the iron of increasing fanaticism there, and that, too, was as it should be. There was no place for anything less on the battlefield. But beneath the fury and the faith, Crowe thought he detected eagerness. Vendruhn seemed to enjoy the prospect of the slaughter to come.

  ‘Lord,’ Otto said to Gavallan, ‘forgive me, but the sword you carry on your back... I was wondering… I can see that it is a relic of great antiquity. Will it be useful against the mask?’

  Do you see? the blade whispered to Crowe. Even the mortal can see what must be done. Unchain me. Use me. Our victory will be swift and bloody. Our reign will be eternal.

  ‘You will not speak of the sword again!’ Gavallan’s voice boomed with anger across the throne room. ‘You will not look at it. You will not think of it. It is never to be used.’

  Otto leaned back against the tacticarium table as if pushed physically by the castellan’s words. ‘Your pardon, lord, I…’

  Crowe stepped towards the Lord Governor. His shadow passed over the mortal. Otto looked up, shaken. ‘Do not make the error of thinking you understand what is happening on your world, or what must be done to combat it,’ Crowe said.

  ‘No, lord,’ said Otto.

  ‘The existence of the daemonic realm has been revealed to you. That you are still sane is to your credit, but it also suggests you do not fully comprehend what you now face.’ A glance at Vendruhn’s eyes suggested she had a much more visceral understanding of what had come to Sandava II. ‘Do not overstep your authority.’

  ‘No, lord,’ said Otto.

  Crowe turned from him before he could finish. He pointed down at the tacticarium table, tracing a path down the major avenues between the palace and the cathedral. ‘High ground here and around the cathedral,’ he said. ‘The routes are direct between them.’

  ‘Symmetry,’ said Gavallan.

  Crowe nodded. ‘The city divided in two. The centres of command at opposite ends.’

  ‘Those things have a leader?’ Otto asked.

  ‘Your cardinal,’ Sendrax said. ‘Or what he has become.’

  Crowe was still thinking about the symmetry. Was he right to see it as more deeply symbolic? And if so, of what?

  The sword laughed, a razor slicing through tendons.

  He could not divine the symbol. It felt like sheer excess. A superfluous gesture by a power with no greater purpose. A display of art, perhaps. A dark power’s perverse amusement.

  ‘We strike now,’ said Gavallan. ‘General, you will advance directly for the river. Cease the artillery bombardment as you reach it. We will land before the cathedral at the same time. That will divide the focus of the enemy.’

  ‘And if the daemons cross before we do?’ Vendruhn asked.

  ‘Then we will land earlier. The strategy is unchanged. Your spear thrust. Our gladius to the heart.’

  Vendruhn still looked uneasy. ‘Will that end the threat? Your pardon for the trouble in my soul, lord. I have visions of Sandava II’s fall to these powers.’

  ‘Sandava II will not be taken by corruption,’ Crowe told her. ‘This I vow.’

  The daemons met Vendruhn’s advance just to the west of the corpse of the Rybas. As before, they charged in a sufficient mass to get through the shelling. They were not an overwhelming tide this time, though. They were a concentrated mass.

  Not as many, Vendruhn thought as the militia opened fire. They’re holding back a reserve. They are bracing for the threat of the Grey Knights. The castellan’s strategy was already working before the operation had truly begun.

  Humans filled out the ranks of the unholy legion. They were ragged, wretched, raving things. Most had been civilians. Some wore the tatters of militia uniforms, and they made Vendruhn’s lips curl in even greater rage. All were shrieking and singing. They had torn their flesh, marking it with bleeding sigils. They bore crude weapons fashioned from scavenged metal. Many had driven the blades through their own palms. They rejoiced in the ecstasy of their pain. They clamoured to welcome more converts to the embrace of delirious agony.

  A
s the armour and infantry unleashed las and stubber fire on the enemy, Vendruhn looked on the corrupted humans with glad hatred. They were not threats to her soul. They were base, weak and contemptible. She did not fear them. She rejoiced in their easy destruction.

  She could focus on them without danger.

  ‘Defenders of Sandava II,’ she voxed to the troops, ‘see our fallen brethren! Look upon them with all the power of your anger. Know that you have already vanquished our enemy, because you are not of their number. Find strength in seeing them and annihilate all before us!’

  She swept the Chimera’s heavy bolter back and forth in a tight arc, cutting into the clustered foe. She stared at the humans. At the edges of her vision she saw daemons brought down by the massed firepower of the column. And she saw the fallen citizens explode. She saw their heretical pain give way to violent death, their bodies turned to shards and spray.

  When the column hit the mass of the enemy, Vendruhn was shouting with gratitude.

  With Berinon piloting, the Purgation’s Sword hit the parvis with stormstrike missiles. The massive concussive blasts cleared swathes of the square of daemons and heretics long enough for the gunship to land. The squads leapt out of the side door, and the Stormraven took off again.

  Before them reared the mass of the Cathedral of Martyrdom Embraced. The lines of the façade and the towers were perfectly vertical. Its immensity soared towards the sky. The north tower’s spire rose higher than the south’s, and this asymmetry created a sense of movement, as if the cathedral were striving to reach ever higher. Its huge rose window was dim, its designs invisible in the gloom, lit only by a dull but gradually intensifying, throbbing violet.

  Crowe kept pace with Gavallan as he marched through the mass of abominations. The rest of his squad and Sendrax’s team kept back a few paces, blasting daemons that tried to get between the Purifiers.

  They were fifty yards from the cathedral doors. The whistling of the fiends and the songs of the daemonettes were an ululating hymn that seemed to climb the façade and twine about the towers, claiming the defiled sanctuary for the Ruinous Powers. Clusters of heretics ran amongst the daemons, heedless of anything except the compulsion to attack the Grey Knights. They were trampled by the hooves of fiends. Daemonettes decapitated them with contemptuous pincer snaps if they got in the way. They wailed their frightful joy until they died. If they reached the Purifiers, their blows were meaningless. They were vermin, but they too had to be destroyed, because daemons still burst from the forms of the most fanatical.

  Crowe and Gavallan scythed their way forwards with bolter and sword. Behind them, their battle-brothers destroyed the abominations that attacked from the flanks. Ruluf and Destrian kept up a steady stream of flame with their incinerators. The Purifiers were an untouchable blade stabbing towards the heart of the infection.

  In the midst of the gunfire and unholy song, the Black Blade of Antwyr snarled its way into Crowe’s mind. This is opportunity. This is chaos. Seize the hilt and strike, strike, strike, strike, strike. He ignored the blade. Its blandishments did not affect the precision of his blows. It shrieked at him, cursing him with the venom of its frustration.

  ‘Is it calling to you?’ Gavallan asked. He drove his Nemesis blade through the torso of a fiend, sliced upwards, cutting the daemon in half, then brought the sword down again, cutting off the clutching arms of a daemonette.

  ‘It is,’ said Crowe. He vaporised the head of a fiend with bolter shells. ‘Does it speak to us both at once?’

  ‘It speaks to all who can hear, its call different for each. That is one facet of its threat. How do you fare?’ Gavallan’s voice was still more drained. It belied the energy of his attacks. The castellan fought as he ever had, but the toll was growing.

  ‘I am strong,’ Crowe said. ‘Let the sword rave as it will.’

  ‘Good.’ Gavallan hacked another daemonette down with a grunt. ‘Exposure has not diminished you.’

  Before them, the daemons gathered in a massed wall.

  ‘Do they believe they can stop us?’ Sendrax voxed.

  ‘If they do, they are mistaken,’ Crowe said. ‘They are presenting themselves for execution.’

  The wall became a battering ram. The daemons charged. It was an assault that would overturn tanks and reduce regiments of mortals to howling madness. Crowe looked upon the surging horror and felt only holy rage. This was everything he stood against. The destruction of this unclean mass was the purpose for which he had been forged. He was the arm of purification, and he would not permit the abomination to taint the worlds of the Imperium.

  His wrath grew. He raised his arms and gathered the flow of the warp in his will. His wrath ignited it. Beside him, Gavallan was doing the same. They acted in concert, two warriors striking with perfect unity. They were the will of the Emperor, and He would not suffer the daemon to exist.

  They unleashed the rage.

  A wall of blue flame burst from their hands. It roared over the daemons. It was purgation itself. It incinerated the unholy flesh. It was a firestorm of sanctity. It silenced the song of the daemons. It dragged screams from their throats, and then it silenced those too. The smoke-filled, late afternoon gloom on the hill of the cathedral lit up with a cold and terrible blaze.

  In its wake, there was only ash.

  For a few seconds, nothing stood between the Grey Knights and the Cathedral of Martyrdom Embraced. Then the daemons on the parvis, and in the adjoining streets, and all the corrupted mortals rushed to fill the gap. Only now they did not attack. They ran and galloped and sprang towards the entrance. The door opened and the daemons poured inside.

  ‘Are they retreating?’ Drake asked.

  ‘No,’ said Crowe. He saw the immaterium’s currents in flood, a violent turbulence streaming with the daemons into the cathedral. ‘They are being summoned.’

  The thing wearing Rannoch’s skin paced back and forth as it examined the cardinal’s memories. Its long legs carried it over the fallen altar in a single stride. Its four arms drew shapes in the air with languid, graceful gestures, conjuring fates, drawing in the energies it had planned to use from the moment Rannoch had donned the mask. From outside the walls of the cathedral, the daemon heard the arrival of the enemy’s ship. The moment it had expected was drawing near. It smiled with anticipation. In the flesh of its belly, a mouth that had been Rannoch’s moved its lips and chattered its teeth in mindless praise and joy. Stretched over the distortions of bone and skin, the remnants of Rannoch’s self experienced pain so complete, so perfect, it hungered after it like pleasure. The cardinal’s illusions had vanished with his identity, but the desire that had propelled him to his damnation still lingered, exulting in a pain that was both punishment and reward.

  Rannoch’s mind was gone, devoured by the daemon. It had consumed him, and now it looked through its spoils, searching. Its moment had come. It already knew pleasure from the thought of what it was about to inflict on those cold deniers of sensation, but it did not underestimate the foe. It anticipated more than the humans’ deaths. There were other pleasures it sought, pleasures it hoped the traces of Rannoch would unlock. And so it leafed through the cardinal’s memories, searching, searching.

  It found what it wanted deep inside, buried beneath layers of the mundane. The memory was small, easily overlooked because the human had almost forgotten it. Rannoch had never had cause to pay attention to this knowledge and it was hidden by administrative trivia. But the daemon found the memory, and it was more than it had hoped for.

  Outside, battle was raging. The grey enemies were destroying the messengers of sensation. They thought they were achieving a victory. It was time to prove them wrong. Time to show them true glory.

  The daemon’s gestures became more rapid. The powers gathered in the cathedral more quickly, and with greater intensity. Dark potential sank into the walls, the floor, the pillars, the vaults. The potential buil
t up, verging upon reality.

  Outside, there was a sudden burning roar.

  The daemon snarled. It moved towards the rear of the cathedral, heading for the crypt. It formed a great conjuring with the movement of its arms. The potential it had brought into being fused with the stone of the cathedral, but it needed to feed before it could become truly real.

  The daemon crooked a finger, and the doors at the front opened. Called to the dance and to the sacrifice, the lesser servants of the Dark Prince charged inside.

  The cursed scions of the corpse-god would not be far behind. They would think their chance had come to enter the cathedral. Perhaps it had, the daemon thought. Though not as they imagined.

  It laughed as it descended the stairs to the crypt. The sound was musical. It was the sound of flies in a wound and tongues set to razors. And it was a signal. The ceremony was complete. There were no further gestures to make. The potential became reality.

  The walls of the Cathedral of Martyrdom Embraced shook with the strength of the first great breath.

  The retreat of the abominations was as sudden as it was unmotivated. Vendruhn’s strike force was causing damage, but so were the daemons and the heretics. Then the daemons were gone. They disappeared in the direction of the cathedral. This was no retreat. This was an assault. The abominations sundered the air with their monstrous song. Vendruhn felt a premonition of disaster. Something dark was on the verge of being fulfilled.

  She could not pursue. The daemons were too fast. The Chimeras at full throttle might be able to catch up, ploughing through and over the mass of heretics, but that would mean leaving the infantry behind. She would not divide her strength to rush into a possible trap.

  The daemons abandoned their human slaves. The heretics were running, but much slower. Vendruhn looked at the wretched apostates. She felt loathing, hatred and contempt in equal measure. In the demented hymns of the heretics, she heard elements she had not detected before. The songs were not as alien as she had thought during the initial moments of the crisis. They contained fragments of familiar chants, all the more debased for being recognisable. Did these creatures still believe they were serving the God-Emperor?