by Andy Hoare
When the council had finally come to vote on the ceasefire motion, only Cardinal Gurney had objected. It appeared to all that Gurney’s career in politics was as good as over, yet he planned, by all accounts, to accompany the fleet to Macragge, to use his fiery rhetoric to drive the ground troops forward in the glory of the Emperor. Lucian grudgingly accepted that was the best role for the cardinal, but silently hoped he went and got himself eaten by some slavering alien monstrosity.
At the last, Brielle had been summoned to address the council. Lucian’s daughter had given a detailed, if somewhat truculent account of her dealings with the tau, in which she had justified her actions by claiming she had sought all along to bring the aliens to the negotiating table for the benefit of all. Lucian had to admit, Brielle had given an impressive performance, playing the innocent victim to Grand’s hostility and the selfless servant of the Imperium in her crippling of the enemy’s command and control system that had caused the tau armies to lose coherence during their retreat from Gel’bryn. Most of the council had lapped it up. Lucian was nowhere near so gullible, but propriety was maintained, and his daughter returned to his side.
As Brielle sat back down, Lucian repeated, ‘Does the council have any questions?’
Most of the councillors appeared too weary to query anything of Brielle’s statement. Lucian was about to call for the motion to dismiss his daughter, when Cardinal Gurney stood.
‘I call for a motion of censure,’ Gurney scowled. ‘For the crime of conspiring with xenos.’
Lucian sighed inwardly, though outwardly he maintained his composure. ‘And who will second this motion?’
Gurney looked to the Logistician-General to his right. Ordinarily, Stempf would have toed the line of his council faction. But with the demise of Inquisitor Grand and the settlement of the ceasefire, that faction had to all intents and purposes ceased to exist.
Stempf stared at the black marble table in front of him, suddenly very interested in the lines of deep maroon flashed through its polished surface.
‘It appears, cardinal,’ said Lucian, ‘that none here will support your motion.’
Gurney’s eyes flashed with impotent rage, and he sat back down, casting a vengeful glance at his former ally by his side.
Brielle was trying hard to disguise a dirty smirk by fiddling with a lock of plaited hair.
‘Then if there are no objections,’ Lucian announced, ‘I propose this final session of the Damocles Gulf Crusade command council is closed.
‘Thank you, gentlemen.’
With a curt gesture, Lucian dismissed the crewmen tending to the sensorium terminals of the observation blister high atop the Oceanid’s spine. Turning to his son and his daughter, he spread his arms wide. ‘Welcome back,’ he grinned, ‘the pair of you.’
Brielle and Korvane refused to acknowledge one another, addressing only Lucian. Brielle stepped up to one of the arched, leaded ports and stared out at the mass of activity in Dal’yth Prime’s orbit. She muttered something, which Lucian could not quite hear.
‘Brielle?’ said Lucian.
His daughter turned, and Lucian saw an unfamiliar hint of sadness in her eyes. ‘I was saying a prayer,’ she said. ‘For them.’
Lucian followed her gaze, towards a trio of huge troop transports that hung in formation ten kilometres to the Oceanid’s starboard. Each carried an entire regiment of ground troops, and Lucian knew that one might be carrying the noble Rakarshans.
‘They’re all going to die,’ Brielle said flatly.
Korvane grimaced, evidently unconvinced by his stepsister’s uncharacteristic show of empathy.
‘All of them,’ she said with grim conviction. ‘And billions more.’
Lucian felt a cold shiver pass up and down the length of his spine, as if Brielle’s words were somehow prophetic; as if she were gifted some insight denied to others. He suddenly felt the weight of his own mortality, for the span of his life had been extended beyond the normal measure by the application of rejuve treatments few in the Imperium had access to. As he pictured entire sectors stripped to bare rock by a species of ravening alien abominations, the thought struck him; perhaps the ancient and noble line of the Arcadius would end with him. Who then would remember his deeds and honour his name?
At Lucian’s side, his son closed his hand around the ring his father had given him, the ring containing the cipher matrix of the stasis-vault on Terra, where rested the most valuable asset in the dynasty’s possession: the Arcadius Warrant of Trade.
Sergeant Sarik was knelt in prayer in the Nomad’s chapel. Through an armoured portal wrought in the form of the White Scars lightning-bolt Chapter icon he could see the crusade fleet mustering for war, scores of tenders and service vessels swarming around the wallowing capital ships as crews and supplies were ferried back and forth. Most of the ground forces were already embarked, though it appeared that at least one Brimlock unit would be left behind, from the initial deployment at least.
The chapel represented a small part of Sarik’s home world, the pelts of huge Chogoran beasts adorning its walls lending it the aspect of the interior of a chieftain’s yurt. Mighty curved horns adorned the walls, many inscribed with the names and the deeds of the warriors who had slain them in glorious battle. In the centre of one wall was mounted a massive, reptilian skull, taken from the mica dragon that Sarik and his fellow scouts Qaja and Kholka had slain together on Luther McIntyre when all three were but neophytes. The scent of rockrose hung heavy in air, the dense smoke drifting upwards from an incense bowl set in the centre of the chapel. Upon the altar beneath the lightning-bolt portal was laid a sacred stone tablet bearing ten thousand-year-old script hewn by the hand of the White Scars’ primarch himself, the proud and wild Jaghatai Khan.
Sarik was in the chapel to recite aloud the name of every battle-brother that had fallen in the battle for Dal’yth Prime. Each would be honoured later, he knew, according to the customs of each Chapter represented in the crusade force, but Sarik had been their field commander, and he owed them that much. The tally had been great, for the tau had proven a fearsome, yet ultimately honourable adversary. He felt no ire towards the aliens, and accepted the necessity of the re-deployment to Ultramar. Sarik was a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes, a son of Jaghatai Khan, who was himself a son of the Emperor. His duty was to a higher calling.
As Sarik completed his litany, commending the souls of the fallen to the eternal care of their ancestors, a revelation born of his meditation came over him. Where previously he would have raged impotently at the loss of so many brothers, brooding alone for days on end at the injustice of the galaxy, a new clarity and wisdom now settled upon him. It was as if the script inscribed on the stone tablet before him by his primarch had been written just for him, for they spoke words the meaning of which Sarik had never truly understood though he had read them countless times. In the crucible of the battles fought these last few days, Sarik had been re-forged, like a dulled blade returned gleaming from the hand of the master artificer.
Sarik felt renewed purpose and resolve deep in his heart. Though the tyranids represented a dire threat to the very survival of mankind, they were also the agency by which the champions of the Imperium would come together and find honour and glory beyond measure. Even now, garbled reports were coming in of the terrible enormity of the tyranid invasion. Sarik’s battle-brothers in his own and many other Chapters were dying, giving their lives to hold at bay the most devastating incursion the Eastern Fringe had ever witnessed.
Sarik swore, to his primarch and to his Chapter, that he would stand at their side come what may. By his savage pride and the honour scars carved into his weather-beaten face, Sarik vowed that the tyranids would know the wrath of the White Scars, and of all of humanity.
About the Author
Andy Hoare is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel The Hunt for Voldorius, as well as Commissar and a number of Warhammer and Warhamm
er 40,000 short stories. He spent many years working in the Games Workshop Design Studio and now writes background and rules for Forge World’s Imperial Armour and Horus Heresy books.
An extract from Castellan.
The causeway of flesh burned before Garran Crowe’s eyes.
The Stormravens Purgation’s Sword and the Harrower strafed the end where it met the island of Hive Skoria. Washed by the turgid waves of the ocean of sludge, soaked in the effluent of tens of thousands of years of industry, the bodies ignited. The conflagration spread wide. A wall of flame cut Skoria off from the mainland. The fire rose and fell with the waves. Noxious smoke billowed thousands of feet into the air. Skoria was a phantom, the dark mass of the hive appearing and disappearing behind the firestorm. The last hive of Sandava III to be spared the daemonic incursion was unbowed. The channel between it and the mainland was a flaming moat. The towers looked down on the end of a war.
‘This is the final stand of the abominations!’ Crowe voxed to his strike force. ‘We have them at bay!’
This is no victory! the Black Blade of Antwyr snarled in answer. The voice in Castellan Garran Crowe’s head lashed out in rage. You struggle in futility, it warned. Your hope burns.
Crowe heard desperation in the sword’s raving. He heard impotence. It was Antwyr that had failed on Sandava III. It was Antwyr’s hope that burned. It had failed to break Crowe with despair. He was renewed. At the head of two squads of Purifiers, he was closing in on the shore of the mainland, and he was closing in on the end of the war. Antwyr shrieked, and Crowe plunged it into the body of the fiend of Slaanesh that charged him, gabbling its desperation to pummel with its hooves. Its tail stinger struck over his shoulder at his spine. It failed. The iron halo mounted above his power pack generated a gravitic conversion field that turned the blow away. The stinger shattered against artificer armour whose sanctity had been confirmed by a thousand battlefields. Crowe twisted the blade in the thorax of the fiend. The daemon stumbled forward, impaling itself on the indestructible metal, and falling into the terrible light of Crowe’s purity. His righteous anger matched the wrath of the blade. Where he walked, the sombre day of Sandava III blazed with harsh, merciless holiness. The daemon’s shape tore open from the thorax, peeling back, disintegrating into ash from the inside out. It issued a last, gargling scream, and then Crowe marched through the swirling cloud of its remains, already swinging the sword to decapitate two more fiends that lunged for him, jaws agape.
The squads marched behind him in two close formations. There was a space between him and the two Knights of the Flame at their heads. There was room for daemons to get between the castellan and his battle-brothers, if they were reckless enough to make the attempt. The few who tried did not fight long. The gap was a needed distance. It diminished the voice of the Blade of Antwyr just enough for the other Purifiers to push its taunting and insinuations into the background and focus on the extermination of the daemons. The war on Sandava III had been a hard one, and a long time for the other Grey Knights to be exposed to Crowe’s presence. The burden of Antwyr was his to bear, and never set aside. His grip, the surest prison of all, must forever be on the hilt of the corrupt, corrupting, indestructible relic. By the Emperor’s will, his being had been shaped for this task. His brothers were strong in faith and sinew, yet the sword was a spiritual poison, its corrosion so powerful it could erode even their defences.
There was another gap between the Purifiers and the strike force from the First Brotherhood. Two Terminator squads had taken part in the salvation of Sandava III. Beside them rumbled the Land Raider Crusader Malleus Maleficarum. Heroes beyond taint, a dozen warriors now who had exterminated a world-wide plague of daemons, they still needed to keep their distance from Crowe.
‘You seem renewed, brother castellan,’ said Drake, a Knight of the Flame, the voice of fellowship reaching across the physical distance between his squad and Crowe. He used a private channel, for Crowe’s ears alone.
‘I am, brother.’
‘That was no simple victory against the daemon prince at Labos, then.’
‘It was not.’
Hive Labos, a thousand miles west on the mainland, had been the centre of the incursion. There Crowe had destroyed Varangallax. The transformed keep had fallen, the guiding hand of the incursion was no more, and the purification of Sandava III had become a matter of time. Crowe’s struggle against Varangallax had also been a personal one. ‘The enemy sought to make me despair,’ he said to Drake. ‘It confronted me with the echoes of our losses on Sandava II.’
‘Old ghosts.’
‘Indeed.’
His spirit had been drained by the decades of being besieged by Antwyr. Varangallax, a monster born from the tragedy of Sandava II, had tried to break him down with visions of the futility of all his struggles. It had failed.
‘My burden is my honour,’ Crowe said. ‘I welcome it.’ He welcomed Drake’s perception, too. It was a reminder of brotherhood that transcended the isolation that was Crowe’s lot. It would make easier the return of that isolation, at the end of this battle.
In a final push to taint the world beyond salvation, the daemons were attempting to reach Skoria. From the ruins of Hive Conatum, less than fifty miles south of the narrows between the mainland and the island of Skoria, the abominations had dragged the bodies of millions of slaughtered civilians. They had thrown the bodies into the viscous sea, and so had created shoals of corpses, building flesh upon flesh until the causeway advanced, a finger of damnation, across the waters.
They had not reached the other shore. The Stormravens were destroying the causeway, filling the air over the channel with the clouds of human debris. They strafed back and forth over the flames, knocking the furthest point of the causeway back and back away from Skoria. Crowe brought up the Purifiers and the strike force of warriors from the First Brotherhood behind the final daemonic horde, closing from the south and west. To the north of the corridor from Conatum to Skoria, the land shot up in jagged, heavily mined peaks. To the south-east, a fault line began as a mile-wide canyon before Conatum, and as the land dipped, became a talon-like inlet a hundred miles long. The daemons’ advance had stalled, and now they were trapped. Ahead, they faced an impassable ocean of fire. At their backs came something worse. A relentless force of silvered grey cut them down.
This is something more meaningful than victory, Crowe thought. It is a cleansing.
He deliberately turned from the personal satisfaction of the war’s end. But then Sendrax shouted over the ululations of the daemons, and there was no escaping the personal. The war had been aimed at him, but it had dragged in his comrades in destiny. ‘The day of our long vengeance is almost complete, brothers!’ the Knight of the Flame announced, his voice booming from his helm’s vox-casters. ‘We shall lay the ghosts of Sandava to final rest!’
The other Purifiers of Sendrax’s squad cheered. Enough of them were survivors of Sandava II to feel the rush of final justice. Crowe bit his tongue rather than impose solemnity until the last daemon was hurled back to immaterium. He knew why Sendrax exulted. He felt the same urge, though he could no longer celebrate. This moment had been long in coming. It had been due for more than a century. He had been a Knight of the Flame when, led by Castellan Gavallan, the Grey Knights had landed on Sandava II. The daemonic work had begun there, with the death of Gavallan and, at the last, the Exterminatus of that world. A web had been cast for him then, one that had closed here on Sandava III, with the same atrocities, and the daemon prince created by the war on Sandava II attacking Crowe when the decades of ceaseless spiritual and mental attacks by the Blade had weakened him, made him vulnerable to the claws of the past and to the illusion of futility. He was the target, but his brothers who had been with him on Sandava II, and suffered the same losses, had felt the impact of the attack, too.
On this day, final justice was rendered. For Gavallan and the dead battle-brothers, and for t
wo worlds of the Imperium sacrificed to the dovetailing machinations of Antwyr and abominations of the Dark Prince, the debt was being paid. The daemonic works were ashes now. Hive Skoria would be spared.
For Crowe, there was satisfaction, but no triumph. The cost was too great, and his war had no pause. The Blade was always there, always in his head, grinding and insinuating, whispering and screaming. It was tireless, sleepless, merciless – a battering ram at the gates of his will.
This is no victory, the sword said again as he swung it with relentless rhythm.
Sensing defeat, summoned by the presence of the daemon blade, the abominations surged at him, shrieking their hate. They ran straight into the burning halo of psychic force that surrounded Crowe. It was the light of a purity of faith so absolute, so unwavering, it lit up the battlefield near the castellan, and the abominations burned at its touch. They staggered back, flesh smouldering, and Crowe cut them down with the sword that drew them. If this was not a victory, it was something very close to one. He would accept it.
Drake voxed, ‘Some ghosts will never lie easy. But I am glad to give them justice.’ He was more sober in his assessment than Sendrax. He always was.
‘The success of our mission is sufficient,’ Crowe said. The incursion was on the point of being defeated. He should not expect more. ‘But I agree with you, brother. I, too, am glad.’
The rocky terrain sloped down, and Crowe could see over the daemonic horde to the burning shore. Less than a mile separated the Grey Knights from the sea. The abominations had run out as far as they could onto the shrinking causeway. They were writhing silhouettes in the flames. Their forms reached out in frustration and wrath for the hive that was now denied them. Some of the daemons that congregated on the shore pushed forward, their rush toppling their foul kin into the burning sea. Others turned back, hurling themselves at the Grey Knights. Crowe measured the desperation of the abominations in their anger. Creatures of sensation and vice, they had, until recently, howled with pleasure as they rampaged across the planet. Their songs had changed since the fall of Varangallax. The music of damnation had become shaded with bitterness, then with panic. Now there were only screams. The daemons charged into a storm of fire from the legionaries. The Malleus Maleficarum came up on the left flank of the Grey Knights’ strike force. Its hurricane bolters shredded landscape and daemon alike. The sweep of its fire carved arcing swathes ahead of Crowe. The sound of hundreds of mass-reactive bolt shells exploding in near simultaneity smashed the final traces of the daemons’ song. This was a different music, brutal in its rhythm and regularity. It was a martial drumming. It split the air with fury and with judgement. The horde boiled with confusion on either side of the swathes. Confusion and dismay robbed the daemons of what momentum they had.
