The Chapters Due

by Graham McNeill

  M’kar paced the chamber, flexing the hybrid musculature of its borrowed flesh. Somewhere deep inside it, the soul of Altarion still raged against its fate, but the Dreadnought’s former identity was awash in a sea of swallowed souls.

  The daemon lord’s anger grew with every step. It had escaped the prison the Lord of the Ultramarines had crafted for it, but its confinement was no less. Ever since its brethren had been driven from the blue world, the planets of Ultramar were anathema to it, and treading their surfaces was like walking on broken glass. The Lord of the Ultramarines was within its grasp, but the air of Talassar was a poison to it, the light of its sun the deadliest radiation while Calgar’s pet seer still lived and empowered the wards of Castra Tanagra.

  Its daemon army raged against the fiery walls of the shrine fortress below, leeching the strength of the wards with the force of their own deaths. Thousands were consigned to oblivion with every passing day, their bodies drained to nothingness by the flames conjured by Calgar’s warlock. Their deaths were in service of their infernal master, and each spark of existence was surrendered willingly.

  The Indomitable might be falling apart, but M’kar cared nothing for the weapons of its mortal followers. The half-breed dreamed of seeing Ultramar in flames, but M’kar wished only to see Calgar destroyed. Ultramar was nothing but the faded remnant of an empire that had shone brightly an aeon ago in defiance of Terra, insignificant in itself, but representative of an old wound that M’kar could not help but pick.

  The tides of the warp sang to M’kar through the rift torn in the heart of the star fort, and it could sense the soulfires of the Bloodborn across the vast gulfs of space that separated the daemon from its followers. On the desert world of the triple system, mighty daemon engines did battle with Ultramarines tanks and infantry. The soulfires of the dead found their way to him, and he tasted their growing desperation as the enemy slowly gained the upper hand. On the forest world, the fires of the Bloodborn no longer burned as their master’s ancient enemies wiped them out.

  Yet it was on Calth where it sensed the greatest confluence of life threads. Many lives had come to their end, itself nothing unusual for a conflict of such scale, but many of these were the bright lines of those marked by fate. M’kar shuddered as it recalled the final days of its last battle on Calth, the sight of its former master being cast down by Ventanus, the very weapon charged with his destruction being turned on he who had borne it to Calth.

  The worlds of Ultramar were anathema to its presence, but M’kar had a special hatred for Calth. This world had humbled his Legion. It had resisted the coming of the Word, fought against the true powers of the galaxy and defeated them. The father of the Ultramarines had waged an underhand war with Ventanus at his side and driven the scions of the storm from Calth. M’kar would never again descend to Calth, for that world was the final resting place of its nemesis.

  When Calgar was dead, M’kar knew that Honsou would need to be destroyed, for it had seen the power lurking in the half-breed’s heart, the potential that could be unleashed were he to attract the attentions of a daemonic patron.

  A sudden wave of power surged through the warp, followed immediately by a cold emptiness. M’kar halted its pacing and turned its senses outward, descending through the aetheric layers of the planet below to witness the battle raging in its name.

  Castra Tanagra was wreathed in fire, as it had been for weeks. The flames were of such purity that it burned to look upon them, driving the daemons back and destroying their forms and souls with every second it burned. The walls were empty of defenders, but it made no difference. While the fire burned, nothing warp-spawned could draw near.

  M’kar drew as close to the fortress as it dared, feeling the desperation and fear within the keep. Doom hung over the hearts of its defenders like a smothering shroud, but beneath that was a shining light of brighter emotions. Hope, courage and nobility of spirit. Though M’kar could approach no closer, it saw the brightest light burning in the heart of the fortress, and its joy soared as that light gave one last flare of illumination before fading like a dying ember in a fire.

  And as it diminished, the fire surrounding the fortress vanished.

  TWENTY-THREE

  MARNEUS CALGAR KNELT beside Varro Tigurius and watched the colour drain from his face. For three weeks, his Chief Librarian had hovered close to death, but now it looked as though his invisible struggle was at an end. Agemman looked enquiringly at him, and he shook his head.

  “My lord,” said his First Captain, nodding towards the firing slits cut into the walls of the keep. “The fire at the walls. It’s dying.”

  “I know,” he said, holding tightly to Varro’s hand. It was cold and grey, lined and thin, like an old man’s. “That’s not all that’s dying.”

  “The daemons will be coming again. We need to get onto the ramparts,” pressed Agemman. “The gunports need manning. If this is the end, then we should face it head on.”

  “Do it,” said Calgar. “I will be with you presently.”

  Agemman nodded. “He was a good man,” he said at last.

  “He’s not dead yet, Severus,” pointed out Calgar.

  “Of course,” said Agemman, bowing and moving away.

  Calgar had carried Varro Tigurius from the breach in the walls with the daemons snapping at his heels. In their hunger to slay him they had hurled themselves through the fire, but its pure light had consumed them instantly. The fire had burned for three weeks, and they had used the time wisely, further strengthening the defences, resting and practising quick reaction drills for the reserve forces. Varro had remained in his deathly state throughout, unmoving and with his pulse slowly weakening as he slipped ever closer towards death.

  “You have to live, Varro,” he whispered. “We can’t do this without you.”

  He held his Chief Librarian’s hand tightly willing him to live and wishing he could gift him a portion of his own strength. Calgar remained at his Chief Librarian’s side for several minutes until he felt the presence of several people behind him. He looked up from Tigurius, blinking back the tears that threatened to come as he saw nearly a hundred of the civilians they had discovered in Castra Tanagra.

  “Maskia Volliant,” said Calgar. “Praefectus of Tarentum, what do you want?”

  “Will he live?” asked Volliant. “Lord Tigurius? Will he live?”

  Calgar sighed and stood. “I don’t know, Master Volliant. He is slipping away from us, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “What can we do to help?”

  Calgar shook his head. “Nothing, unless you have an extensive knowledge of Astartes physiology and psychic mastery.”

  “I can’t say as we have, my lord, but we can keep him warm and stay with him so he don’t die alone,” said Volliant.

  The honest sincerity of Volliant’s words touched Calgar and he saw the same desire to help on the faces of everyone around him. This was the nobility of spirit that made mankind great, the strength in solidarity that made Ultramar a shining beacon of the very best humanity could achieve.

  “I’m sure he would appreciate that,” said Calgar. “I know I shall.”

  “Way we figure it, we’d be dead long since if not for him,” said Volliant, as the crowd surrounded the pallet bed upon which Tigurius lay. Calgar moved aside to let them gather, knowing that Tigurius would approve of this spontaneous gesture of gratitude.

  “Goodbye, Varro,” he whispered, turning away and making his way to the ramparts of the keep where Agemman and thirty warriors of the 1st Company awaited him. As Agemman had said, the fire with which Varro had kept the enemy at bay was gone, and the daemons were massing at the edge of the cracking gouge of lightning at the end of the valley.

  Cold winds blew over the fortress and the first rays of dawn spilled over the mountains.

  “The last dawn,” said Calgar. “Reminds me of the final canto of the Lament of the First. ‘Praise the sun that brings the dawn of our final doom.’”
<
br />   “Now there’s a depressing thought,” replied Agemman. “Saul Invictus’ last speech before the tyranids overran them.”

  “Sorry, just thinking aloud.”

  “I hope that’s not the inspiring speech you’re planning to give.”

  “I’m all out of speeches, Severus,” said Calgar.

  Agemman nodded and said. “Good. I don’t much care for speeches before battles.”

  They lapsed into silence, watching as the new dawn grew bolder, painting the mountains in vivid gold and purple. Calgar thought it beautiful and knew Tigurius would have loved to capture such a scene in water-colours.

  “What are they waiting for?” demanded Agemman, gripping the parapet tightly. “Why aren’t they attacking?”

  Calgar had been wondering the same thing, but his answer came a moment later as the shimmering rift in the sky suddenly stretched and twisted as though something monstrous were pushing itself through. A swelling roar of terrible adulation swept through the daemonic horde and Calgar’s heart was seized in a clammy grip as he saw a monstrous form—part machine, part monster—force its way onto the surface of Talassar.

  Grossly swollen and fused with mechanised parts, the daemon lord M’kar towered above its host, a mighty fusion of daemon and Dreadnought. The core of its form was unmistakable, the fused remnants of a granite sarcophagus hewn from the rock of Castra Magna clear for all to see. Calgar saw with a sinking heart whose body provided the host for the Thrice Born.

  “Brother Altarion,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”

  Though dawn had been spreading across the heavens, the sky now darkened and cold winds from the dead of night blew over the ramparts with the reek of seared flesh. M’kar roared and the daemon host charged towards the fortress. They surged without any semblance of order, a riotous mix of scaled beasts with swords, multi-limbed spawn creatures that howled with insatiable hunger and loping hounds with flayed-skin flesh. Pallid creatures with dead eyes and glistening bodies of lacquered armour slithered through the horde, alongside cackling, winged beasts of utter darkness.

  The entire valley was filled with daemons, a host pouring from the rift in reality and fed by the vile energies spilling into the world. This was an army like no other they had faced.

  This was a tide of daemons to drown worlds.

  Calgar took Severus Agemman’s hand. “Courage and honour, brother,” he said.

  “Courage and honour, my lord,” replied Agemman.

  TO BE CLAD in flesh once more, albeit this cumbersome meld of machine and its daemonic form, was sublime. The air and sunlight were vile and painful, but that was nothing compared to the sheer joy of existence in the material plane. To know the sensation of flesh tearing, blood drinking and the suffering of mortals was a priceless boon worth any price.

  The shrine fortress was wide open, the breach in its walls torn wider in the weeks of battle, and its pitiful defenders were as good as dead. The wards that had once formed a web of inviolable protection more impenetrable than any wall of stone were little more than faded memories. The daemons swarmed around it, a snapping, roaring, screeching horde of mindless killing organs.

  Gunfire from prepared positions constructed within the walls cut down the first daemons over the walls, but no matter how many had their forms blasted apart, scores more scrambled over the dissipating corpses to attack. M’kar shrugged off a dozen impacts, its baleful aura spreading before it like the bow wave of a starship and sweeping over the defenders.

  Fear and despair flowed from the fortress, and M’kar bathed in such potent blights swirling in the aetheric winds. Civilians fled their positions, running in blind panic for concealed sally ports. Blue-clad Astartes stood their ground and maintained their fire, but even they were forced to withdraw in the face of overwhelming numbers.

  M’kar let them go. They were an irrelevance. It could sense the soulfire of its nemesis within the keep and drank deep from the well of power flowing from the Indomitable. Its arms were swirling masses of light and flesh and metal, inconstant fluxes of potential. With a thought, one arm became a claw sheathed in dark, glittering metal, its edges toothed with tearing barbs. The other became a ferocious siege hammer, a twisted parody of the weapon its Dreadnought host had once borne.

  Apt that it should be the weapon to destroy Calgar.

  The daemons surged towards the keep, nothing now keeping them from the meat-prey within. Astartes on the ramparts of the keep’s roof fired relentless barrages of solid rounds and hurled grenades that exploded in the midst of the daemons. The entire length of the tower erupted in flames as its defenders fired from hundreds of new loopholes and gun-ports.

  Scores of daemons were cut down, their warp-spawned flesh torn apart and undone. Some even struck M’kar, insect bites against a Titan. Heavy guns sought it out with powerful las-blasts or missile impacts, but M’kar shrugged them all off.

  With the power flowing from the rift aboard Indomitable it was as good as invulnerable.

  Winged daemons swooped down onto the roof of the keep, clawing at the Astartes there and screeching in delight as they flocked like hunting birds. The top of the keep was obscured by the sheer mass of winged monsters, a darkened umbra lit from within by stuttering blasts of gunfire.

  The great door of the keep was fashioned from adamantium and steel, a flat arch with scenes of ancient battles carved into its frame. M’kar smashed it and the surrounding stonework apart with one blow. The door exploded into lethal splinters of razored metal and whole swathes of the keep’s walls collapsed around it. The daemon lord forced its way inside the keep as fresh volleys of gunfire ripped into its flesh. Some shots even stung, but the wounds reknitted almost as soon as they were inflicted.

  The interior of the keep was a wide open space, filled with confections of angled walls and redoubts, all freshly built and constructed with an order and rigour that could only have come from the scions of Roboute Guilliman. Terrified mortals and blue-clad Astartes huddled behind these barriers, and M’kar laughed at these pathetic attempts to bar its slaughter.

  “You cannot hide from me, Calgar!” it roared, and a dozen mortals dropped dead at the damned sounds issuing from its artificial throat. Daemons swarmed over the barricades, tearing at the defenders with yellowed claws and ichor-dripping fangs. Groups of Astartes counterattacked, driving the daemons back and buying the mortals time to regroup, but these were the desperate last twitches of a dying beast.

  M’kar smashed through a heavy barricade of stone blocks, scattering mortals and Astartes alike. Ten of the Emperor’s lackeys came at it, each with a long-bladed polearm on a golden haft. They circled it and stabbed like savages hunting a plains-dwelling leviathan, and M’kar laughed at the absurdity of their defiance.

  Its claw arm snatched three from the ground and snapped them in two as its hammer pulverised another’s chest to ruin with a single blow. The other warriors didn’t run, but M’kar didn’t want them to flee. Its claw arm twisted and reshaped itself into a colossal rotary-barrelled cannon. A two-metre tongue of black fire gouted from the weapon, ripping the Ultramarines to shreds and obliterating the flesh within their ruined armour. There would be no genetic descendants for these warriors.

  One warrior had escaped the slaughter and M’kar stepped forward to slam its hammer arm into the Astartes. The body was hurled it across the heavily modified entrance hall, breaking into pieces with the impact. A storm of shots struck its body, but it ignored them as irrelevant. M’kar roared and a blast wave of warp energy exploded outwards, disintegrating those mortals closest to it, and driving hundreds of others insane as their minds collapsed.

  The screams of madness and fear rang deep in M’kar’s body, empowering it with the suffering it was causing. Its daemonic horde spread throughout the tower, spilling up hastily blocked stairwells and taking the slaughter to the heart of the keep. Already M’kar felt the rich seam of life being extinguished, murder by murder.

  Nothing could match its power, and a dozen mor
e Astartes died before any foes of merit dared stand against it. Two warriors surrounded by blazing auras emerged from the wide stairs at the rear of the chamber. One was bathed in the red of anger and determination, the other in shimmering gold and white. A host of warriors wreathed in shimmering silver light stood at their sides.

  “Calgar,” hissed the daemon with unadulterated relish. “I am Thrice Born, and the prophecy of Moriana speaks of your death by my hands at this time.”

  “That will not happen,” said the red-haloed Astartes. “I am Severus Agemman, daemon. First Captain of the Ultramarines, and you will go no further.”

  MARNEUS CALGAR'S BLOOD chilled at the sight of the Thrice Born, knowing the deaths it had caused throughout Ultramar were his fault. To know that had he been strong enough to destroy the daemon aboard the Indomitable all this could have been prevented would be a burden he would carry for the rest of his life.

  Right now it didn’t look like that would be a long period of penitence.

  Clad in the Armour of Antilochus and bearing the Gauntlets of Ultramar, no one stood a better chance of destroying M’kar, yet still he hesitated. The daemon had resisted him once before, and he had had the backing of the holy ordos that time. Without them, what chance did he now have?

  Casting off such doom-laden thoughts, Calgar and Agemman marched towards the daemon lord with weapons raised. The interior of the keep reeked of burned flesh, a hideous stench that conjured unbidden images of corpse worlds and hellish regions of space where carrion eaters dwelled in blood.

  Angrily he shook off the taint of the daemon’s presence, and forced himself to concentrate on all that would be lost should he falter. Centuries of progress, the ideals that humanity stood for something greater than barbarism, and the last chance of salvaging the dream that almost died ten thousand years ago.