Mephiston Lord of Death Read online

  I land, wreathed in electric crimson. I refocus my psychic flow, channelling it into Vitarus. The blade’s glow is blinding, like blood from the heart of the sun. I plunge it through the faceplate of the traitor charging at me. The sword pierces armour as though it were not there and liquefies his brain. The power necessary for that kill has come effortlessly. The nexus of energies here is massive. I feel as if I could tear Pallevon’s moons from the sky and hurl them to the battlefield.

  And there is the anger. That is present here, too. It is gigantic. It fills me with its dark ecstasy. The Red Thirst stirs. It would take nothing to unleash that, to become a maddened, indiscriminate destroyer. The violence of the traffic on the vox tells me that my brothers experience the same phenomenon. We are dangerously close to a mass frenzy.

  The enemy’s lines become a cauldron. Hatred clashes with rage. This is close-quarters combat, the bloody meat that feeds the maw of our Chapter’s hunger. We fight as independent units, damaging the foe from within until the main force joins us. I strike out first on one side, then the other. The enemy is all around me, a cornucopia of targets. I welcome them all to their end. The power of the warp crackles lethally through my every slash. I fire my plasma pistol with a steady rhythm, heedless of the risk of point-blank shots, exulting in the star-heat that swallows my foe. Armour and flesh melt together, and I extend the reach of death’s kingdom.

  Something hits me. The blow is giant. It could smash walls, but the hammer is without substance. I stagger, spent energy dissipating around me. There is a smell in the air: ozone mixed with blood. I keep my feet and round on my attacker. Before the Sanctified witch can ready another energy blast, I seize the being of his skull. I crush it to dust.

  The traitors fight hard. They fall back into close formations, compact fists of ceramite bristling with guns. They have staked a claim on the tower. They will not relinquish it easily. But the numbers and momentum are against them. Our aerial assault has disrupted the coherence of their lines. When the main body of Fourth Company hits them, it does so with the force of a tidal wave. Castigon is at the forefront, leading the charge over the wall. ‘For Sanguinius!’ he calls, his voice echoing off the tower.

  Quirinus is right behind him. ‘For the Emperor!’ His shout is praise, hymn, and exhortation. It is a weapon in itself. The violence of its faith is a reminder of Quirinus’s greatness. Whatever our differences, I will never deny the power he brings to battle.

  And following Quirinus’s call comes the response. ‘Death!’ my brothers shout. ‘Death!’ All of them, a choir of doom. ‘DEATH!’ A chant, a beat, a march of the unstoppable. There is nothing that can withstand such a force.

  And nothing does. The Sanctified do not retreat so much as they are pushed back. They fight to the limits of the possible, but the impossible is beyond them. They must withdraw. And so they do, killing with every lost metre of ground, but, in the end, pulling away up the north slope of the amphitheatre.

  We do not pursue. Just as the Sanctified stayed with their prize, so do we now.

  ‘Give me a perimeter,’ Castigon orders. ‘Shame the enemy with its might.’ We use the same wall as foundation, but our barrier has the strength of numbers and righteousness. We are a fortress of iron blood, and we are unbreachable. The need to remain with the tower is primal. I feel it myself. I still do not believe the location to be holy, but I am fully determined to make it ours. I know the effect is a result of the confluence of energies. My awareness of its nature makes it no less powerful.

  The Sanctified retreat beyond the reach of our guns. The Stormtalons harry them until they melt into the streets of the city. I see, over the skyline, a guttering, tumbling flame: the traitors’ other Thunderhawk dies. We have time now to consolidate our position, to fix our grip firmly on the tower.

  But I do not know why we should wish to do so. I do not know why we are mimicking the behaviour of the Sanctified. It disturbs me that this is what we are doing. Another realisation: the traitors used their Rhinos only as defensive barriers. They never fired the vehicles’ guns. They would have been able to hold us at bay for much longer had they done so. It is as if they were as reluctant to damage the frozen battlefield and its warriors as we are.

  I have never known the forces of the archenemy to be worried about desecration.

  What is this thing that we have won?

  The dust of combat settles. With it, the rage loses its intensity. Our company has weathered the storm of our savage instincts. Or, rather, most of it has. As I take in our current dispositions, I see that a disturbing number of battle-brothers have succumbed to the Black Rage. Albinus is being called upon to perform the grimmer duties of his calling. Quirinus accompanies him on his dark rounds, murmuring litanies as the lost brothers are restrained and sedated before being transported back to the Crimson Exhortation. Their induction into the Death Company lies ahead, and then their end - in the final glory of a last charge, or at the edge of Astorath’s axe.

  There are also brothers for whom there shall be no redemptive battle. They are too deep into the Red Thirst, and shall never surface. For them, what lies ahead is only a shuttered cell on Baal, in the Tower of Amareo. They are not reliving the glorious defence of Holy Terra. They are maddened, rabid. Their mouths are coated with the blood of their fallen enemies, and quenching that thirst is the only instinct that remains to them. They howl for blood, and it does not matter whose. The prayers Quirinus intones at their side are the most mournful. These warriors have fallen to the most cruel facet of our Flaw. They have become the embodiment of the worst of our natures. They are what the rest of us must struggle against being. To descend to that state is an indignity beyond the tragic.

  No one has yet crossed the threshold of the tower. I do Quirinus the courtesy of waiting. This is his vision we are fulfilling. Let his be the honour of leading the way inside. Or the humiliation. While I wait, I examine the exterior of the tower. It is not what I had supposed it to be. It is an extraordinary construct. It appears to be built entirely of weapons. The ancient and the modern are joined, made one. Swords, axes, flails, maces, rifles, pistols, power fists and more: they are all here. They lock together with the perfection of artificer armour. The tower is made of war.

  It is impressive. I have never seen the like. But where is the connection to the Blood Angels? There is no trace of the hand of Sanguinius in this construction. So that must await inside.

  When the rites and care due to our brothers fallen in battle or to madness have been discharged, Quirinus leads the way to the tower door. The entrance is enormous, worthy of any cathedral. The Gothic archway towers over us. The door is massive. Its construction is one of layered paradox. It appears to be made of wrought iron, but the metal is something far more dense and heavy. And yet, it appears much lighter. It makes one think of soaring. The design sculpted into the metal creates this effect. At first, it seems to be intricate crosshatching, representing nothing. But after studying it for a few moments, I see feathers. And then I see wings.

  Quirinus stops a few paces from the door. ‘Look, my brothers,’ he says. ‘Oh, look.’ He speaks barely above a whisper, but that whisper carries through the silence that has fallen over the company. Even those too far away to see the detail of the entrance have been caught in the spell of reverence that has come upon us.

  For my part, I feel no anticipation. I feel a deep unease. I remain as convinced that a trap has been prepared for us as Quirinus is sure that we stand before a holy shrine. I am alone in this. Castigon and Albinus, helms removed, have some of Quirinus’s reverence in their expressions as they stare at the door.

  Quirinus takes a slow step forward. Then another. He reaches out to touch the door. There is no hurry to any of his movements. It is as if he is reluctant to end this final moment of anticipation. Is it, I wonder, because some part of him suspects that he is about to be proven wrong?

  I examine my own motives. Do I want Quirinus to be deluded? No, I do not. It is not vindication tha
t I seek. I know what I read in the currents of the warp. I know what I experienced aboard the Eclipse of Hope. With its statue and its star chart, the ship was a lure of the most mocking kind. Yet here we are, having been forced to bite down on the hook, and smiling as if we enjoyed it. We are caught in an obscenity, and its full measure will be revealed when Quirinus opens that door.

  Quirinus places his hand against the metal. His simple touch it all it takes. There is no struggle to shift what must be a great mass. There is no lock to defeat. It is as if our journey here were struggle enough, and now we are to be rewarded with the object of our quest. The narrative is too perfect. I refuse to believe in it. Yet the door opens. It divides along an invisible seam and the two halves swing apart, admitting us to the centre of the maelstrom. We cross the threshold.

  I cannot credit what I see.

  The interior of the tower is a single chamber reaching what appears to be the entire height of the spire. There are no windows visible from the exterior, but they must exist, concealed somehow in the folds of the architecture, because light streams in from the upper half of the walls. The red light of Pallevon’s sun is filtered, as though through stained glass, and fills the chamber with downward slanting beams all the shades of red. Each of those shades in turn is but a variation of flame or blood: the dull glow of dying embers, the blinding incandescence of the firestorm, the nuances of fresh blood, old blood, arterial blood, corrupted blood. Spiralling diagonals of red, all focussed on what lies on a massive marble dais in the centre of the chamber.

  And what, by the Sanguinary Chalice, is on that dais? It is a statue of gold and silver and a stone with the resilience of marble but the appearance of ruby. It is Sanguinius, depicted in the final moments of his martyrdom. The accursed Horus is not here, but the presence of his death-strike is, as our primarch is captured in an eternal fall. The statue is life-size. Its detail is extraordinary. None of us was alive the day Sanguinius fell, but our genetic heritage is encoded with memory, and I know, we all know, that we gaze upon a perfect recreation. That is Sanguinius. The features are the very incarnation of nobility. Every detail of his armour, of his carnodon robe, of the fold of his wings, the lie of the feathers - it is all beyond comprehension. I am wrong - this is not perfection. This is something more. This is reality. This is that most terrible moment in our Chapter’s history, the moment that is the birth of the Black Rage, transmuted from event into art.

  The sight of the statue is a blow of a kind and degree that none in Fourth Company has ever experienced. It is shattering. The silence with which we approached the doorway is as nothing compared to that which envelops us now. The entire company files into the chamber, the tramp of boots somehow being swallowed by the colossal, reverential stillness. It is as if we have come to the end of words, and nothing shall ever be spoken again.

  That is an illusion, of course. It is a lie. There will be words. And I will not accept the truth of this display. It cannot be what, in a voice of gold and silver and blood, it proclaims itself to be.

  For Quirinus, there are no doubts. He has reached the pinnacle of his life’s work. He spreads his arms wide. It falls to him to break the silence. He does so as befits a Reclusiarch of the Blood Angels. He does not whisper. He answers the silent thunder of the statue with thunder of his own. ‘Brothers of the Fourth Company of the Blood Angels,’ he cries. ‘Behold Sanguinius!’

  He falls to his knees.

  ‘Sanguinius!’ All the voices are one voice. All emotions are one: a collective, total rapture. ‘Sanguinius! Sanguinius! Sanguinius!’ The zeal of the cry could shatter worlds. Then the company, in unison, follows the example of Quirinus, and kneels before the statue.

  I do not shout. I do not bend the knee. I am not unmoved by the statue. I feel the same blow as my brothers. I am shaken. But I have seen false miracles before. I am conscious of every doomed step that has brought us to this moment. Our path has been drawn for us by gods dark and false. The warp energies are so powerful that reality is thin as gossamer, brittle as dying parchment. There is obscene falsehood here.

  And so I stand alone among my brothers in an act of refusal. I know what I know. I will not be swayed. But the doubt. Oh, Throne, the doubt. If I am wrong, then behold two moments: the passion of Sanguinius, and the damnation of Mephiston.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE DARKNESS OF VENERATION

  ‘There stands the truth of Mephiston!’ Quirinus proclaims to the company at large. To me he says, ‘You are no Blood Angel.’

  I check the rage that would have me blast Quirinus where he stands for such an outrage. There are too many dangerous unknowns at play here, and I will not let the situation escalate. But I have my honour, too. ‘You will withdraw those words, Reclusiarch,’ I tell him. A fraction of my anger escapes my control. My words are the hiss of wind on a glacier. For a moment, a rime of frost spreads out on the stone floor before me.

  ‘If they had been intended as an insult, I would,’ says Quirinus. ‘They were not. I seek only to strip away dangerous illusions.’ He stands on the statue’s dais, almost touching the figure, but keeping a few reverent centimetres before it. The rest of my brothers remain kneeling, most with their heads bowed. A few, Albinus and Castigon among them, look back and forth between Quirinus and where I stand at the tower door. They say nothing.

  Quirinus goes on, his voice almost gentle, solicitous of my fallen state. ‘You must see what has happened to you,’ he says.

  ‘Tell me.’ I must know exactly what he believes.

  ‘You are soulless, Chief Librarian.’ He puts the full strength of his ecclesiastical rank behind that pronouncement. ‘You defeated the Black Rage. You do not respond to the holiness of the icon in this chamber. These are symptoms of the same condition.’ He spreads his arms to take in our worshipful brothers. ‘What is it to be a Blood Angel? It is to suffer the Flaw. It is our tragedy, but it is also our identity. Consider the nature of the Flaw, brothers.’ He is no longer addressing me directly. He is soaring into a sermon. ‘Were it limited to the Red Thirst, we might regard it as no more than a curse, a genetic shame that threatens our Chapter with a humiliating destruction. But there is also the Black Rage, and by the blood of Sanguinius, is this not also a blessing? To be one with the memories of our primarch. Is there not something within each of us that welcomes this dissolution? The Black Rage will be our end, but it is also our most vital link to our progenitor. It keeps the fires of righteous vengeance forever burning in our hearts.’ He pauses, drops his arms, and looks at me. The skull of his helmet is accusatory. ‘You are immune to the Black Rage, Mephiston. And so you have shed the defining feature of our Chapter. You cannot know, any longer, what it means to be a Blood Angel. You have proved this. You are unmoved by what stands behind me.’

  ‘Immune?’ I am outraged by the presumption.

  ‘You fought back and conquered the Black Rage. That amounts to an immunity.’

  Can Quirinus really be this foolish? Can the Chaplain whose erudition was so respected by Calistarius be so ignorant? His time in the warp has rotted his judgement. His argument is not theology. It is not philosophy. It is nonsense. Quirinus expounds upon the Black Rage, but he has not known it himself. Of all the Blood Angels here present, only I have experienced that fate. And though I fought my way back, I did not do so without cost. Yes, Quirinus, your friend Calistarius is dead. But do not imagine that Mephiston has no memory of the struggle beneath the rubble, of the desperate fight to reclaim self and rational thought from the fatal grip of the Flaw. I am at war with the dark tides of rage every second of my existence.

  My respect for Quirinus snaps into brittle shards.

  And yet.

  And yet, I do not express my outrage. I do not even feel it in unadulterated form. Though he could not know what he struck, Quirinus has hit upon my doubt. There are the questions whose answers it may be for the best that I never find. My loyalty to the Blood Angels is not a question. But my identity? That is a question, one hidden
from all but myself. What am I? What is the thing that stirs inside me? Am I truly a Blood Angel still?

  Yes, I am. I will believe this. I must believe it. The ever-widening gulf between myself and the rest of the Chapter is a source of doubt, but it is not proof.

  It is not proof.

  Quirinus is wrong, too, to think I am not affected by that statue. Unlike the rest of the company, however, I am resisting the artefact’s emotional gravitation. There is no point yet in trying to pull my brothers away from the icon. Its hold is too powerful. Any attempt on my part to break it would simply confirm, in the eyes of all, Quirinus’s worst surmises about me. It is growing more difficult, however, to quell my anger. Instead of frost, green fire crackles around my feet, scarring the surface of the stone, gouging lines as if with claws of diamond. I cannot stay here. If I do, Quirinus will say something, and one of us will do something, that I shall regret. I turn and stride out of the tower.

  I am not pleased by the sight that greets me here. With the retreat of the Sanctified, the degraded population of Vekaira has returned to its normal life. Or what passes for normal on this world. The miserable wretches approach the tower on their knees, throwing up their hands in prayer. To whom do they think they are praying? Sanguinius was worshipped on Baal before the arrival of the Emperor, but this is not Baal, nor is it a world that somehow doesn’t know of the Emperor’s existence.

  After a minute, I am joined by Castigon. He is here, I know, out of respect, not friendship. ‘What are your intentions?’ I ask him before he can utter a peacemaking platitude.

  ‘We consolidate and hold this position, then destroy the Sanctified when they return.’

  I share his conviction that there will be a counter-attack. But we still lack a reason for the traitor’s interest in this site. ‘And the statue?’

  ‘Once Pallevon is secured, we will take it to Baal.’ He pauses. ‘We will use all due caution,’ he says.