Warden of the Blade Page 9

  ‘I did not mean to suggest it wasn’t,’ Crowe said.

  Gavallan shook his head to show he was not offended. ‘Your concern is a valid one. The issue is this: there is too much about the Blade we simply do not know. Has it, in some fashion, contrived to bring this situation about? I don’t think so, but I can’t know that it has not. Has it, perhaps, foreseen what is coming to pass? Perhaps. Or are the names a coincidence after all, and the sword seeks to trouble us by making us believe it is an actor or precognitive? There were, remember, many names on that list. Perhaps the precognition came from you.’

  Gavallan raised his hands in a gesture so close to despair it disturbed Crowe more than any of the castellan’s words. He wondered how many times over the decades Gavallan had been tormented by these questions.

  ‘I hope you will learn more when the burden passes to you,’ Gavallan said. ‘I hope you will see further and more deeply than I have. I hope you will find the answers I have not.’

  There are no answers, the sword whispered. There is only obedience.

  ‘As for our present circumstances,’ said Gavallan, ‘our choices are limited.’

  ‘That troubles me too.’

  ‘And me.’ Gavallan shrugged. ‘Yet here we are. So we shall proceed with our eyes open, aware that we may be heading into a trap. Which is no more than we must always do.’

  Crowe nodded, then took his leave. As he descended the stairs, he wrestled with his frustration. Gavallan was right. The Grey Knights must pursue the threat whose absence had still been so potent on the Envoy of Discipline. They had to follow the evidence to Sandava II. But Gavallan seemed prey to a kind of fatalism. That worried Crowe at least as much as the sense the Purifiers were being forced to follow the steps of an unholy dance.

  Crowe reached the bottom of the staircase. On the other side of the last of the warded doors, Sendrax was waiting for him.

  ‘I thought you might be here,’ he said.

  ‘I wanted his thoughts on the state of the mission,’ Crowe answered, deliberately vague.

  Sendrax laughed. It was an unusual sound in the halls of the Sacrum Finem. It was even more unusual in the Chambers of Purity. It was not usual coming from Sendrax, though. Crowe had never been sure whether to envy or disapprove of his sense of humour.

  ‘Your visit was more important than that,’ Sendrax said. He turned serious. ‘You have been chosen as the Warden, haven’t you?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ The evasion was ridiculous. Yet Crowe did not feel comfortable admitting to that truth yet. Doing so felt like a death sentence for Gavallan.

  ‘You are the obvious candidate, brother. And I can think of few other reasons for one of our number to subject himself repeatedly to the proximity of that sword.’

  ‘True,’ said Crowe. He would not lie.

  ‘It is inevitable, then?’ Sendrax asked.

  Crowe frowned, unsure what the other Knight of the Flame meant. ‘If it is to be my fate, so be it,’ he said. ‘We all must serve as we are called upon to do.’

  ‘Yes, we must.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Sendrax shook his head. ‘Forgive me, brother. It is the thought of your sequestration that pains me.’

  ‘It will be necessary.’ Crowe headed down the hall in the direction of the arming cells.

  Sendrax fell into step beside him. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ Then, after a minute, ‘Is necessity all there is, then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is everything preordained? Is it all written?’

  The question was uncomfortably close to Crowe’s concerns about the mission. ‘I have faith that it is not,’ he said. ‘That is the essence of the Prognosticars, is it not? With their aid, we change the writing.’

  Sendrax grunted and fell silent. Crowe recognised his mood. Sendrax did not suffer opposition well. This made him a ferocious warrior. At times, though, Crowe thought it also made him unwilling to accept unpalatable realities as quickly as he should. Crowe believed there was a difference between refusing defeat and not recognising necessity. Sometimes there was nothing else.

  Crowe would be the next Warden of the Blade. That was a necessity that could not be altered.

  The arming cells sounded with the murmur of prayers and the quiet activity of serfs assisting the Purifiers make ready for the coming battle. Armour was being restored to gleaming purity. Prayer scrolls were affixed once more. There were new oaths of moment to be recorded. There were weapons and shells to be blessed anew.

  Crowe and Sendrax parted company at the entrance to the cells. The hall branched left and right. Crowe went left to join his squad. He walked past the cells, nodding a solemn greeting to his brothers.

  Drake was kneeling before a shrine, but rose when he saw Crowe.

  ‘An era is coming to a close, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Crowe stopped. He did not have to ask what Drake meant. If Sendrax had deduced what was coming, Drake would have known even longer.

  ‘It will end,’ Crowe said. ‘It has not ended yet.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Drake. ‘Long may our champion be victorious.’

  ‘Long may he be,’ Crowe said. Then he stopped and shared an uncomfortable look with Drake. They had both been seized by the same thought. Was it their place to wish a longer sentence for Gavallan in the purgatory of his guardianship? Crowe thought about the canyons being etched into the castellan’s face. They were the reflections of the deeper ones cut into his soul. ‘As the Emperor wills,’ Crowe said.

  ‘As the Emperor wills,’ Drake echoed.

  Crowe moved on to his cell. He had many of his own preparations to make. The Sacrum Finem was storming through the warp towards Sandava.

  He had to be ready for whatever truths might await.

  For three days, the bombardment held back the daemons. For three days, the fear in the west of Egeta rose as rumours spread. But for three days, Vendruhn lived with the hope of a successful counter-attack. Because for three days, no one saw past the barrier of explosions. The intensity of the barrage triggered a firestorm. It swept far beyond the targeted strip. Smoke blanketed the city, making reconnaissance flights impossible.

  The fire died down at the end of the third day. A wind blew from the north, clearing the worst of the smoke. At dawn, Vendruhn took off from the palace in her Valkyrie. The overflight was brief. She saw all she needed to know almost right away. The ground in the vicinity of the cathedral crawled – it undulated –with capering abominations. Their number was beyond estimation. They had not been diminished by the shelling or the fire. Vendruhn had delayed their encroachment on the western sector of the city. That was all.

  And after she had returned to the palace, and ordered a further intensification of the bombardment, as the sun rose on a day of haze and anticipation, the true siege began. The daemons moved in a concerted mass through the barrage zone. The shells destroyed them by the score, then by the hundreds. When their movement was spotted, Vendruhn rushed to lead from the front. On the embankment, looking through magnoculars, she saw the daemons, silhouetted by the blasts, monstrous figures torn apart and smashed to nothing.

  For a few seconds, she was almost able to believe the abominations were falling victim to a folly, and that their attempt to cross the wall of fire would give her the victory. Then she saw that she was wrong. The daemons were destroyed, but not obliterated. They fell, they lost form, and the liquefying remains flowed together. The shells struck the daemons faster than the sludge could vanish from the materium. The cratered streets filled with a thick, viscous mass of white and pink and putrescent blue. It flowed towards the Rybas. It washed over the east embankment’s parapet. It dropped towards the water slowly, like molten candle wax.

  The daemonic foam touched the water. The taint spread over the river in moments. Vendruhn hissed as she watched oily, nau
seating colours race across the water, and to the north and south. The river looked like skin stretched too tightly over a human ribcage. The skin tore. The river heaved like a wounded beast. The surface broke up into soft rubble. The water had turned into gelid flesh. The level of the Rybas dropped as it threw out chunks of itself, and they began to evaporate.

  The Rybas became the rotting corpse of a giant. The river vanished. Soon there was only the riverbed, piled high with hills of vanishing skin.

  When the river had been corrupted away, the daemons surged forwards. They drove through the shelling in even greater numbers. There was no way to kill them all, and so the breach began.

  Horrors emerged from the smoke and fire. They spilled over the embankment, a stampede of monstrous forms. They raced across the riverbed. Their song came on before them and the air Vendruhn breathed turned thick with luxurious scents.

  In seconds, the situation of the war changed. The daemons were advancing on a front miles long. Vendruhn had built up her forces on this side of the Rybas. She had deep columns of infantry and armour. But all those columns were about to be surrounded by the tide sweeping over the dead river. Her militia was about to drown.

  ‘All companies fall back,’ she ordered. She banged her fist against the hatch as Danek started the engine and turned the Chimera around. ‘Our new positions are inside the palace sector’s walls. We will hold there.’ The circumference of those fortifications was less than three miles. She had the strength to protect that. She refused to believe otherwise. ‘Artillery,’ she voxed, ‘reduce the range. All guns concentrate on the Rybas riverbed. At my command, walk the shelling back. We will destroy the foe as it advances.’

  The companies of the Sandava II Militia retreated, and the streets of Egeta filled with exhaust fumes and the thunder of pounding shells. From the windows of hab blocks came the wails of the populace as they saw their protectors abandon them. Vendruhn heard their despair. She grimaced in contempt. If these people would not fight, if they expected to hide and let others do the dying for Sandava II, then what was coming would be a fitting judgement.

  She swivelled the heavy bolter to face the rear. She would be amongst the last to enter the inner wall of the palace district. She would be among the first to fire upon the enemy.

  The infantry kept pace with the armour. This time, Vendruhn would preserve more of her troops. She vowed this retreat would not be a second rout. The militia formed a solid wall across the Obeissance Boulevard. It was the main artery running west towards the palace sector. This would be her site of bitter, contested retreat. She would make the abominations pay for every yard of their advance.

  The curtain of blasts marched in from the east. The riverbed exploded. Daemons clambered over the western embankment’s parapet, defying the shells. They loped along the boulevard, giving chase to the militia. Vendruhn pulled the trigger, sending a stream of shells over the heads of the running troops. They smashed into a pair of daemons who resembled patchwork insects, blowing them apart. One of the dancing female horrors burst through the cloud of misted flesh, arms wide and eager to embrace its victims with pincers. It swept down upon the last of the troops. It crushed the heads of two men with quick snaps of its pincers. It wrapped its arms around a third and lifted him high. His screams were horrifyingly ambiguous. Vendruhn blasted him and the daemon from existence, ending his bloody transcendence and saving his soul.

  The boulevard turned sharply. The hab blocks hid the enemy advance from her view. Vendruhn could still hear it, though. Over the booming of the artillery barrage, over the growls of the engines, over the rapid march, over the sharp discharges of lasrifles, she could hear the piercing, whistling rise and fall and twist of the daemonsong. It clawed at her spirit. It sought to lure her, but it encountered only her anger instead.

  Vendruhn raised her eyes to the sky. ‘Will you not aid us?’ she cried to the Emperor. Then she yelled until her throat was raw. Her cry contained her rage, her frustration and her grief at what was to come. It was also her prayer, her wordless appeal to the Father of Mankind and her shout of loyalty unto death. And it was her despairing plea for a miracle.

  She fell silent as she saw the miracle arrive.

  It took the form of a streak of silvery grey. It descended through the haze, the sun glinting off its hull. At first, it was a dagger thrust in the sky. It dropped lower so fast it was like a meteor roaring to earth. Its angle of descent flattened out, and it flew overhead less than twenty feet above the rooftops. It was a gunship of the Adeptus Astartes. A Stormraven, Vendruhn thought. The colour was strange to her. She had encountered very few of the Adeptus Astartes in her lifetime, but she had seen many representations of them. The iconography of their heroism was a constant throughout the Imperium. In all the tapestries and murals and friezes and mosaics she had held over the years, Vendruhn had never seen this silver-grey represented.

  The gunship slowed as it passed from her sight. Just after it vanished, flying in the direction of the river, there came the sound of its guns. The drumming was deep and resonant, the music of violent salvation.

  ‘Danek,’ Vendruhn voxed, ‘hold our position.’

  The Chimera slowed to a halt. The rest of the column kept moving. Vendruhn made sure it did.

  ‘All units,’ she ordered, ‘continue on your path. Secure the inner wall. I will join you shortly.’ But not just yet. She had to see. She had to know.

  There had been no communications from the Space Marines. No warning of their arrival. Just a sword blow from the sky. Who were they?

  ‘Take us back, Danek,’ Vendruhn said.

  The Chimera reversed again. It headed back down the boulevard. As it reached the bend, it seemed to Vendruhn that the cries of the civilians had lessened. It was hard to tell in the maelstrom of roaring sound coming from the Rybas. Vendruhn did see faces at the windows now. The people of Egeta had been summoned by a mixture of wonder and terror to bear witness. Though her contempt for their cowardice was undiminished, when the Chimera rounded the corner and she could see as far as the embankment again, Vendruhn shared in the awe.

  The Stormraven was making strafing runs over the riverbed, turning the ground below it into an inferno with twin-linked heavy bolters and assault cannons. It struck with the force of a flying artillery barrage. Missiles streaked from wing-mounted hard points. Their concussive blasts were huge. The shattered bodies of daemons flew over a wide area, and with the precision of those explosions, the ongoing artillery barrage appeared to be making more of a difference. The tide of abominations was no longer advancing along the boulevard.

  The gunship had dropped its troops at the head of the thoroughfare. There were two five-man squads of Adeptus Astartes and a commander. The Space Marines’ power armour was the same silver-grey as the hull of the ship. A mere eleven warriors, yet in Vendruhn’s eyes it was the daemons who were suddenly outnumbered. The abominations converged on the Space Marines as if they were being pulled in by the gravitational grip of a black hole. Vendruhn sensed the narrowing of the huge front that had driven her forces into retreat. The daemons were compelled to destroy a great enemy, and that enemy was ripping them to shreds. Vendruhn gaped at the flash and pound of wrist-mounted storm bolters. These warriors could not be human beings. They were walking tanks. Their swords and halberds and hammers devastated unholy flesh with every blow. The weapons blazed with a light that seared Vendruhn’s vision with its purity. The leader of the Adeptus Astartes bore a crimson banner that rose above his power pack. Chained to the pack was another sword. There was nothing sacred about this weapon. The blade was a thing of night, and it drew her gaze even though her soul tried to turn away. It confused her and disturbed her, even from a distance of several hundred yards.

  But the sword was the imprisoned anomaly. As the Space Marines fought with both crusader fury and immaculate precision, Vendruhn’s overwhelming impression was of terrible sanctity and unforgiving nobility.
She knew, without being told, that witnessing these beings was a privilege, a rare opportunity, and one that would come with a great cost.

  She stared, stunned into silence with the rest of the Chimera’s crew. For a brief moment, the Space Marine fighting at the right hand of the leader turned his head and looked up the boulevard. Vendruhn felt his gaze behind the visor of his helmet. She felt the judgement. She felt the full power of the ice at the heart of the miracle that had come to Sandava II.

  Chapter Six

  CATHEDRAL RISE

  The throne room of the Lord Governor’s palace was on a war footing. The grandeur of its wall hanging had faded into the background. The large reception space had been given over to tacticarium tables. Otto Glas was in military uniform, but it was a ceremonial garb, and there was a marked contrast between it and the uniform worn by his daughter. The general was a veteran, and carried herself with the determined stride of someone bearing a familiar weight of responsibility. Lord Otto had the posture of a man conscious of the dignity required of his position in a crises. He and Vendruhn were carved from the same stone. Their faces were weathered, lined by age and care despite juvenat treatments. The sculpt of her brow and jaw was harsher, more unforgiving than his. Otto was the face of Sandava II standing firm against the threat of the Ruinous Powers. Vendruhn was the fist that would bring retribution to the heretics. They were both, Crowe thought, perfectly suited to their positions. They were exemplars of duty. Unlike the corrupted cardinal, ensconced in the cathedral, they did the Imperium proud.

  Crowe saw their heroism and acknowledged to himself that their deaths would be regrettable. They were most likely unavoidable, though. The entire population of Egeta already possessed too much forbidden knowledge. That doomed them all even more thoroughly than the daemonic incursion itself.

  Earlier, aboard the Stormraven Purgation’s Sword, Destrian had looked down at the swarms of daemons and said, ‘This city is past salvation. Orbital bombardment would be a mercy.’