The Chapters Due

by Graham McNeill

  Only six hounds survived to reach the interior of the breach and Tigurius thrust his staff towards them, chanting the Litany of Hatred as he did so. Forking blasts of azure lightning leapt from the horned skull at its tip, and three of the beasts vanished in explosions of black ash. Another died as a golden-bladed lance plunged into its chest, a second as a silver polearm clove its spine.

  The last beast leapt towards the Chapter Master, but it met Lord Calgar’s fist in midair. The flickering, energy-wreathed gauntlet smashed its face and powered on through its body. The beast was ripped asunder, its howl ringing in Tigurius’ ears as its essence was destroyed. Monstrous pack-masters scrambled over the barricades, scaled daemons with blunt, wedge-shaped heads and vicious, fanged gashes for mouths. They bore black swords and fell upon the honour guard with piercing shrieks of hatred.

  Tigurius smashed his staff into the nearest. Blue fire spread from the wound, and the creature howled as its dissolution consumed it. Lord Calgar smashed his fists into the daemons, each blow precisely weighted and delivered with a fluid economy of motion. For a man encased in bulky plates of Terminator armour, Marneus Calgar moved like a warrior clad in only his training robes. Swords swayed past his head, and claws snatched at empty air, where moments before his body had been vulnerable to attack.

  Tigurius was a sublime warrior, his instincts honed by his formidable psychic powers, but even he could not match the Chapter Master’s preternaturally swift reflexes. As though he moved a heartbeat ahead of the rest of the battle, Marneus Calgar was the greatest warrior imaginable. No weapon could touch him, no beast could wound him, and those that tried were destroyed. His fists were weapons of ultimate destruction, and they pummelled daemons with every blow.

  Nor were his honour guard any less lethal. Their skill had been forged over centuries of warfare, tempered in the most vicious conflicts and honed by the greatest warrior masters in the galaxy. Only to such superlative warriors would the safety of the Chapter Master be entrusted. They fought as a cohesive unit, advancing and killing as one. Decades of training together had created a killing machine that was as efficient as it was deadly. Their ancient blades clove into the daemons, pushing them back with every counterattack.

  Hissing daemons with leathery skin the colour of drowned flesh swarmed through the breach. Their elongated arms were tipped with claws like blades and they moved in loping bounds that carried them easily over the tumbled blocks of marble. Horned beasts with hideously distended jaws followed them. Their speed was incredible, like flickering ghosts that shifted in and out of focus and moved from place to place in the blink of an eye.

  They swarmed Marneus Calgar and his honour guard in a frenzy, and warp-tainted fangs snapped against Astartes-forged armour. Plates buckled and crumpled, but held. Marneus Calgar hammered the daemons, arcing flares of energy erupting from his fists as he smote them hip and thigh. One honour guard was dragged down, a daemon snapping its jaws over his helmet and shearing the faceplate and the front half of his skull from his body.

  Tigurius lanced his staff into the daemon’s back and its flesh erupted in fire as he sent a pulse of psychic power along its length. He spun away from a leaping daemon, twisting his staff and striking left and right. Each impact saw a daemon destroyed, but his strength was fading and each kill took more out of him. Yet, imperceptibly, Tigurius could feel the tide of the battle turning in the favour of the Ultramarines.

  The daemons could not gain a foothold, and with every passing moment, their power ebbed; leeched away by the effort of sustaining their presence in the face of the defenders’ implacable courage. Marneus Calgar could sense it too, and he surged into the daemons with a roar of hatred, a living battering ram of destruction and desolation.

  The honour guard followed their master, forming a spear with him as its point. Tigurius drew upon his deepest reserves to keep pace with the Chapter Master and his warriors, hurling the monsters back with withering bolts of lambent fire. Together, they clove into the daemons and drove them back from the breach until not a single creature remained.

  Tigurius drove his staff into the ground, as much to hold himself upright as it was a gesture of defiance. His strength was all but gone, and weariness swamped him. His eyelids drooped and a grey haze gathered at the corner of his eyes.

  He saw Marneus Calgar walking back towards him, his armour splashed with black ichor.

  The Chapter Master had his fist in the air, and Tigurius heard cheering. “We did it, Varro,” said Calgar, and Tigurius could see the powerful life energies radiating from him. Where Calgar was triumphant, men would feel their hearts lifted and their courage swell. His presence was worth a thousand men on the battlefield and Tigurius tried to smile in response. “We have survived this attack,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper, “but they will be back tomorrow.”

  “Let tomorrow look to itself,” said Calgar as the cheering grew louder. “Tonight we are alive and the moon is shining down upon us. Every attack we turn back leaves us stronger, and every defeat weakens our enemies.”

  “These monsters are just the daemon lord’s chaff,” said Tigurius. “When we are at our lowest ebb, that is when M’kar will come for us.”

  “And when he does I will kill him,” said Calgar.

  “It’s not that simple,” said Tigurius.

  “Yes, Varro, it is,” said Calgar, throwing an arm around Tigurius. “The daemon lord will come and either I will destroy him or he will kill me. It is that simple.”

  “No, my lord,” insisted Tigurius. “It is not.”

  A RHINO WAS never a comfortable vehicle to ride within, but the one Scipio Vorolanus and the Thunderbolts had captured from the Claws of Lorek was especially hateful. Its innards reeked of pollutants and lack of cleaning, and its air filters coughed out fumes that had passed over the engine block. Not only that, but the floor was awash with spent casings, discarded ration packs and bones.

  All that they could cope with, but where an Ultramarines Rhino would bear reliquaries and shrines to the Emperor and primarch, the Claws of Lorek bore daubed crude sigils of unknown provenance that Scipio had ordered burned from the metal. Despite Laenus’ misgivings, the Rhino’s engine had not failed, though it was surely only a matter of time.

  They had crossed the mountains, skirting the more heavily travelled highways, and made their way along shadowed logging roads that drove through the timber lines of the high valleys. They had met no other enemy forces, but that was about to end.

  The road they were following was paved, but much to Scipio’s disgust, it had been allowed to fall into disrepair. It wound downwards through the trees, and, if his directional awareness had steered them true, leaving this stretch of road would bring them almost to the gates of Corinth.

  “Remember,” he said, turning towards the Thunderbolts, who sat on the crew benches along the sides of the Rhino. “This is not a mission of aggression, but one of intelligence gathering. We’re here to ascertain if the Corsair Queen is here. Nothing more.”

  They muttered their assent, though Scipio saw reluctance in their stiff posture and slow response. He understood, for he no longer looked like one of them. His armour was stacked in the weapon stowage bays, and he wore a scabrous collection of rags pulled together to form a loose robe of sorts that covered his Ultramarines and 2nd Company tattoos. His head was bare and he had removed the long service studs from his forehead. Their reluctance was understandable, for who among them did not want to bring the fire of the Ultramarines down upon these invaders?

  Scipio grabbed a stanchion as the Rhino lurched sideways, its tracks biting the roadway as it cleared the trees.

  “Sergeant Vorolanus,” said Laenus through the grille separating him from the crew compartment. “Corinth ahead.”

  Scipio nodded and swung himself over to the commander’s hatch and twisted the locking wheel. It was stiff and rusted, but soon budged and began turning. He climbed out, bracing himself on the top armour and looked out over the great
river city of Corinth.

  “Guilliman’s Oath!” he swore, seeing the smoke-wreathed ruin of what had once been Espandor’s second city. Named for the great victory won by the Ultramarines against the greenskins, Corinth had once been a golden city of culture and learning. As rustic as Espandor’s inhabitants were sometimes perceived, Corinth gave the lie to that cliché, with many fine temples of silver marble, bathhouses, thriving markets and wondrous theatres. It had produced some of the finest architects of Ultramar, and many of the structures within the Fortress of Hera boasted Corinthian design flourishes.

  All that was gone now, for Corinth had burned.

  The sky above the city was stained with ash and smoke, the clouds weeping a soft rain upon the city that had hosted Marneus Calgar for a month in the days following his inauguration as Chapter Master. Its once mighty temples had been cast down, razed to the ground by those who hated the Emperor, and its fine counting houses, palaces and exquisite mansions were hollowed-out ruins, their magnificent interiors gutted by fire and looted by Bloodborn warriors.

  Hatred filled Scipio, for this was not the wanton destruction wrought by the savage greenskin or mindless beasts, this was methodical vandalism and pillage. People who should know better had done this.

  A sweeping bow of the River Konor bisected the city, its glittering waters now fouled with slicks of oil and nameless pollutants spilling from the banks. Three bridges had once spanned the mighty river, but stumps of blackened stone now jutted from the water like jagged sandbars. Sergeant Learchus of the 4th Company had blown these bridges to stall the advance of a greenskin invasion, a stratagem that had saved the citizens of Corinth, but cost the city part of its heritage. Lashed to the remains of the centre span, a wide pontoon bridge swayed in the current, supported on hollow promethium drums, and it was towards this temporary structure that Scipio’s captured Rhino drove.

  The Rhino skidded and revved its way downhill, passing the last of the trees as the logging road approached a junction with a much wider highway. Hundreds of soot-coughing trucks and troop carriers made their way along the road, but Scipio could see no order or purpose to the traffic, just a honking mass of armour, looted vehicles and columns of infantry jostling for position on the road.

  “What do you want me to do, sergeant?” said Laenus from below.

  “Get on that road,” said Scipio. “I have a feeling they’ll make way.” He was proved right, as the Bloodborn trucks slowed to allow him to join the flow of traffic. Bloodborn soldiers quickly ran from the road, dropping to their knees and drawing their combat blades in salute. Scipio stared with hatred at his mortal enemies, men daubed in colourful war paint and dressed in outlandish, garish costumes more suited to the Theatrica Imperialis than a field of battle. They mistook his hate for contempt and lowered their gaze.

  Clearly the Astartes were to be feared, even among the Archenemy. The Rhino rumbled along the road, moving against the flow of traffic, but making better time than those going with it. Trucks moved aside, infantry scurried away and armoured vehicles revved their engines furiously as they fought to clear the way for them, believing them to be champions of their foul gods.

  Laenus turned them onto the pontoon, and Scipio’s stomach flipped as the bridge creaked alarmingly at their weight. Timber spars and lengths of flakboard had been lashed and nailed to the drums, and he could see spumes of water through the wide gaps. Moving with the flow of the water and the sway of the bridge, their Rhino ground its way across the bridge, reaching the halfway point and approaching one of the ruined gates of Corinth.

  He had begun to allow himself a morsel of hope that they might make this crossing without incident, when he saw two Rhinos come through the gate and turn onto the pontoon.

  Their hulls were dull, reddish brown, but it was impossible to tell whether it was paint or blood that coated their surfaces. The engines of both tanks growled like a hungry predators, and a warrior in armour the same colour stood tall in the commander’s hatch of the lead Rhino. His armour glistened with fresh-spilled blood and he carried an axe in one heavy gauntlet. Thankfully, the warrior was wearing a helmet, Scipio didn’t think he could face seeing one so like him, and yet so corrupt, face to face. To look a fiend like that in the eye and not kill him would be beyond him. “Sergeant?” asked Laenus.

  “I see him,” said Scipio, keeping his voice low. “Just keep driving,” The Rhino drew level with them and the warrior of the blood god held his axe out towards Scipio in a gesture of salute. Scipio responded in kind, holding his clenched fist out and slamming it to his chest with what he hoped was a suitably bestial roar. His roar was answered and the enemy Rhinos passed onwards.

  Scipio closed his eyes and let out a breath as they disappeared into the juddering stream of traffic. It had taken all his determination not to pull his pistol from beneath the hatch and put a bolt round between the traitor’s eyes. He looked up as he felt the Rhino’s tracks bite onto solid ground once more. Gravel and broken stone crunched under the tracks as they pulled uphill towards the shattered gatehouse. The Rhino passed beneath its broken archway and drove into the enemy-held ruins of Corinth.

  A shiver travelled the length of Scipio’s spine.

  “The belly of the beast,” he whispered, seeing heavily-armed Bloodborn warriors filling Corinth’s streets and thoroughfares. “The Emperor watch over us all.”

  THOUGH CALTH, ESPANDOR and Talassar saw the brunt of the Bloodborn invasion, the battles being fought across Ultramar were not simply confined to those worlds. On Quintarn, the 5th and 6th Company clashed with the battle engines of Votheer Tark and a thousands-strong Bloodborn army. Where other planets would have their destinies decreed by the champions, fate had chosen to turn the wheel of the galaxy on its endless cycle. The war raging across the fertile plains of Quintarn was made up of grinding clashes that saw armies hammer one another and withdraw without any clear victor emerging.

  Votheer Tark was no general, more a mass of furious neural connections welded to a fragmentary artificial consciousness infected with scrapcode and a minor daemonic entity. As such, the Ultramarines captains had little difficulty in outfighting his battle engines. But where the Ultramarines had a clear edge in tactical nous, Tark had a scavenger-like ability to turn almost anything into a deadly machine of war.

  The Ultramarines were superior fighters, but Tark’s quantity had a quality all of its own.

  Tark’s Dark Mechanicus adepts plundered entire agri-cities of their machinery, turning devices of cultivation and growth into weapons of destruction and eradication. Vast threshing machines were up-armoured and fitted with all manner of weapons and sent into battle alongside stalk-legged tanks with flame units that had once been pesticide sprayers slung under their distended bellies.

  There was no shape to the battles on Quintarn, simply a heaving mass of bizarre hybrid tanks clashing with the orderly battle lines of the Ultramarines and what remained of the Quintarn Defence Auxilia after Tark’s initial invasion. Such brutal battles won little glory and made few heroes, for who would later boast of the artificially-motivated machine tank they had brought down? Galenus and Epathus led perfectly coordinated battles, fighting in complete accord with the Codex Astartes, but against such a monstrous foe, their stratagems left little room for retaking the initiative.

  Despite that, some warriors found themselves in their element.

  Antaro Chronus, Brother-Sergeant of the Ultramarines Armoury excelled in armoured warfare, and led numerous countercharges in the midst of battles in danger of becoming bloody stalemates. Though he had four tanks blown out from under him, each one was able to slay its killer and several more before finally giving out.

  Despite such valour and fortitude, the war on Quintarn was going badly for the Ultramarines. While Tark’s losses could be easily replaced, every Imperial vehicle put out of action greatly lessened the Ultramarines strength. As galling as it was to admit, the enemy force on Quintarn was too strong.

  Only when three of Voth
eer Tark’s forge-complexes were destroyed did the tide turn in favour of the Ultramarines. These hideously transformed agri-cities were the assembly yards of the Dark Mechanicus, and it had been assumed that these nightmarish forges had fallen victim to their creators’ dark practices.

  That notion was overturned with the arrival in the heart of the Imperial fortifications of Torias Telion and forty-three Ultramarines Scouts.

  Neither captain had been aware of Telion’s presence on Quintarn, but the grizzled Scout-sergeant stayed only long enough to replenish his warriors’ supply of ammunition, food and explosives before setting off into the wilds of Quintarn once more.

  The sudden appearance of Telion’s Scouts divided the Ultramarines commanders. Some welcomed his presence, while others demanded he attach himself to the order of battle. Captain Galenus wanted to admonish the grey-bearded Telion for failing to acknowledge the chain of command, but the cooler heads of Chaplain Cassius and Captain Epathus won out.

  As the tanks of the 5th and 6th Companies made ready for war once again, they went knowing that Torias Telion was watching over them.

  FOURTEEN

  FOUR VALLEYS GORGE was bathed in stark light from the solumen generators worked into the roof, casting deep shadows and illuminating the vast cavern mouth that led back to Guilliman’s Gate and the surface of Calth. This giant compartment was a place of transit, where voyagers from the surface would descend into the rock of the planet and begin their journey onwards into the Cavernas Draconis.

  Three wide valleys led from the gorge, one each to the west, south and east. Castra Occidens barred the western valley, Castra Meridem the southern, and finally Castra Oriens the eastern. Before them, numerous graceful structures had sprung up along the wide roads to offer the myriad services travellers into Calth might require. Hostelries, accommodation, fuel and shrines dotted the gorge, a pastoral landscape at odds with its subterranean location.