The Death of Antagonis

by David Annandale

  The monster howled at the injury and babbled incoherent rage. Toharan was regressing further and further as he grew. Language had abandoned him. He was little more than a pure loathing of flesh. Whether he knew who Volos was, or was simply focused on his tormentor, he followed, as Volos had hoped he would. Toharan pounded up the staircase, leaping over gaps with more power than grace.

  ‘Keryon,’ Volos voxed. ‘Come over the dome. Full Hellstrike barrage at what you see there. Do not hesitate.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’

  Toharan reached the platform. He lunged for Volos. The Dragon shot over him, landed behind and slashed at his legs behind the knees. The tendons healed immediately, but the second during which they were severed was enough to drop Toharan. He squirmed around, his flesh bubbling like boiling tar, and his arm was suddenly longer than it had been a moment before. Toharan caught Volos before he could step out of reach and flung him against the temple wall like a rag doll. Through the ringing in his ears, Volos heard the roar of the approaching Battle Pyre. Toharan didn’t let go. He smashed Volos against the wall again. Volos heard and felt his left arm break. Ribs were swimming in his chest. And he was flying again. He slashed with his right hand and parted enough of the wrist to make Toharan drop him.

  Volos limped back a few steps. Now almost ten metres tall, Toharan advance on him. Volos stood his ground. He wanted Toharan to stay put for just a few seconds. He removed his helmet and showed the unwilling monster the face of one who embraced what he was. The mutation stared down at him. Toharan’s eyes were endless reservoirs of stupid hate, but buried deep in the cancerous instinct, Volos saw a spark of the personal. Toharan knew who he was. Some part of him was savouring this moment. Good, Volos thought.

  Toharan rose to his full height. His fists, big as pillars, came together. They began the descent that would smash his rival to nothing.

  Volos whispered, ‘Fire,’ as the Hellstrikes flashed down through the dome. Keryon’s aim was truer than he could have hoped. Toharan disappeared in the fireballs. Flames washed over Volos and the blast wave threw him to the wall again. His left shoulder popped out of its socket. But Toharan’s bulk shielded him from the worst of the explosions. The light and fire faded, and Toharan was still standing. He was sluggish, though, stunned and shrieking. His flesh was a flaking, blackened crust. Pink muscle showed through deep crevices. Ignoring his own injuries, Volos launched himself forward on his jump pack, right arm out, blade as spear tip. He hit Toharan in the chest. Toharan toppled like a felled oak. Flesh disintegrated and bones shattered inward. He started healing, but not fast enough. Not this time.

  With his good arm, Volos butchered his former friend, flaying open his chest. He stomped a boot through the ribcage and there, fire damaged but pumping madly, were the hearts. Toharan’s hands closed in on either side to crush him like an insect. Volos sliced through aortae and venae cavae, severing the hearts from the body.

  The hearts stopped beating. The hands fell back. Toharan breathed once, the air escaping in a sigh of fruitless denial, and he was dead.

  Volos did not look back at the corpse as he returned to the floor of the temple. He was exhausted, but he did not slow as, one-handed, he joined in the final slaughter of the remaining traitors. The Swords and Disciples had nothing left to fight for. The Black Dragons had the Emperor, and justice, and vengeance. They had more than enough.

  When it was done, Volos crouched over Nithigg. His armour had cracked like an eggshell, and there was very little left of his body. But he lived. One side of his face was a pulped ruin, but the intact eye fixed Volos with a desperate intensity. His lips moved. Volos leaned in, and heard Nithigg’s whispered prayer: ‘Let me serve.’

  ‘You shall,’ Volos promised, and didn’t move from his side until, days later, the Immolation Maw finally transited out of the warp and found them.

  EPILOGUE

  There was no end. Not yet.

  The grinder had missed Aighe Mortis by a precious few million kilometres. It ran out of energy partway out of the Camargus system, and drifted into an eccentric orbit.

  ‘It cannot remain here,’ Setheno told Volos when she met him aboard the Immolation Maw.

  There would be no end. Not yet.

  Volos stood in the reliquary, surrounded by holy silence and sacred history. Several decks up, Nithigg lay in sus-an membrane coma, waiting. Before Volos, the blessed coffin of the Dreadnought stood empty, sleeping, also waiting. Second Company’s losses were great. The Apothecary, Librarian and Chaplain were still in the death-sleep. There was no one with the skills and knowledge to do what must be done. ‘There will be,’ Volos promised. ‘Have patience, brother. You will serve.’

  ‘There must be an end to it,’ Setheno said.

  They were standing on a balcony of the Palace of Saint Boethius, overlooking the Grand Square. ‘And this is the price,’ Volos answered. He watched the tens of thousands of pilgrims pass through on their way to the starport. They chanted thanks and joy. Their robes were colourful sackcloth, fusing penitence and celebration.

  ‘It is. Victory always has a price.’

  Volos thought about his decimated company and said nothing.

  Setheno must have read his expression. ‘You have suffered casualties. Your numbers are reduced. This is temporary. You are stronger. That is permanent.’

  ‘Stronger?’

  ‘You are unified. You are purified. There has been a necessary purge.’

  A terrible suspicion dawned in Volos’s mind. ‘You planned this?’

  Setheno shook her head. ‘No. But a purge was coming, thanks to Inquisitor Lettinger and his political allies. Better this be the form it takes.’

  ‘So that we might be useful to you, instead of Lettinger.’

  ‘So that you might be useful to the Emperor. You are discovering the true potential of your Chapter.’

  ‘Necessity again,’ Volos said softly, but he didn’t disagree.

  ‘Yes,’ said Setheno. ‘You have felt it. We must do anything that will preserve the Imperium. What we will be called on to do will only grow worse. The future is desperate. The Golden Throne was built by human hands, captain. It requires endless care and repair. Do you imagine that it will last forever?’

  Volos’s eyes widened. He was staggered by the blasphemy. ‘You are without faith,’ he said.

  ‘You’re wrong. There is no greater faith than the faith in a lost cause. I will fight to preserve the spark of humanity in the galaxy. The Emperor is our only hope, and I will give him my last drop of blood, and that of anyone else, should it come to that.’ She gave Volos a hard look. ‘So will you.’

  He nodded.

  There was the sound of footsteps on marble behind them. They turned to see Tennesyn approach. Standing with him was Jozef Bisset, now acting regent of Aighe Mortis. ‘Canoness,’ Tennesyn said. ‘My lord.’ He regarded them with a mixture of fear and resignation.

  ‘You are ready?’ Setheno asked.

  When Tennesyn nodded, Volos said, ‘Wait for us below.’

  Tennesyn withdrew. Bisset walked with him, a supportive hand on his shoulder, and cast an uneasy glance back at the two giants.

  ‘You are a monster of myth to them, too,’ Volos said to Setheno.

  ‘I hope so,’ she answered. ‘You and I need reminders of that sort. We must know the atrocities we commit for what they are. And the next one is mine.’ She gave him a solemn nod. ‘Captain.’

  He returned the gesture. ‘Canoness.’

  She left. Volos watched the pilgrims a while longer, and accepted his responsibility for what was coming. Setheno was orchestrating it, but he condoned it. The millions of pilgrims thought they were travelling to the Gemini moon to pay due reverence to the site of the battle that had saved their planet. They were, but they would not be returning.

  Necessity: the grinder had to be destroyed, or the threat of its use would forever haunt the Imperium. It had to be driven one more time, into the heart of the star Camargus. So it had to
be powered up again. One more monstrous burnt offering. And someone had to study the device, and learn how to steer it. Tennesyn, the xeno-archaeologist, had the turn of mind that made him the logical candidate to be given that mission. Volos hoped the old man would survive, but was already wishing him a swift flight to his reward at the Emperor’s side.

  The pilgrims marched endlessly through the square. Not a few of them danced towards their doom. Volos’s hands itched with the slick of innocent blood. The people sang. Their hymns were familiar ones, but sounded different to Volos’s ears. He knew why. The songs of joy were really the lamentations of victory.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID ANNANDALE is the author of the digital short story Eclipse of Hope and the novellas Yarrick: Chains of Golgotha and Mephiston: Lord of Death for Black Library. By day, he dons an academic disguise and lectures at a Canadian university on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

  He lives with his wife and family and a daemon in the shape of a cat, and is working on several new projects set in the grim darkness of the far future.

  An extract from Space Wolves: Blood Of Asaheim by Chris Wraight

  On Sale March 2013

  ‘So it’s true?’ asked Váltyr.

  Gunnlaugur grunted.

  ‘It is.’

  Váltyr shook his head.

  ‘When did they tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘Six hours ago.’

  ‘Skítja,’ Váltyr swore.

  ‘He came in on a runner. They didn’t send a warship. If they had, I’d have known sooner.’

  Váltyr placed his slender hands together.

  ‘Will he return, then?’

  Gunnlaugur smiled wryly, a look that said, Why would they tell me?

  The two were alone, hunched over a firepit and surrounded by lambent shadows. Gunnlaugur’s chamber was high up on the eastern flanks of the Fang, close to the edge where the biting winds of Asaheim came over the Hunter’s Gap. Ironhelmsshrine was within reach; on rare clear days, it could be seen from the narrow realview portal mounted on the external wall.

  Out of battle armour, there was only marginal physical difference between the two warriors. Gunnlaugur, the one they called Skullhewer, was a fraction heavier-set, a finger’s width shorter. His shaven head still had residual traces of flame-red hair in the stubble, though his beard was slush-grey and stiff with age. His features were the same tight, brutal ones that had propelled him to clan chief of the Gaellings when he had been mortal, only now filled out and made heavier by aggressive muscular augmentation.

  He sat on a stone slab in front of the fire, massive and stooped, his shoulders draped in furs. He ran a dagger through his hands, playing with the killing edge, flicking it between thick, dextrous fingers.

  ‘We are wounded, brother,’ Gunnlaugur said. ‘Tally it up. We lost Ulf on Lossanal, Svafnir on Cthar, Tínd to the greenskins.’

  As he spoke, his dark eyes reflected the warm light of the coals.

  ‘We’re under strength,’ he said. ‘He’ll have to come back, just to make us viable. And where else can he go? Who else will take him?’

  Váltyr listened intently. His narrow face was hot, and the glow exposed the many scars latticed across his cheeks.

  His hands were still. Váltyr never played with blades. His long-

  sword, holdbítr, was strapped across his back just as it ever was. The weapon was only drawn to be used in combat, or for veneration, or for ritual maintenance, and even then he never left its side, watching the Iron Priests intently as they invoked the sleeping spectres of murder that dwelt within.

  Blademasters – sverdhjera – were a strange breed, guarding their weapons as if they were children.

  ‘He chose to leave,’ said Váltyr. ‘He could have stayed, and we would have welcomed it then. He could have contested for the–’

  ‘You’d have made the same choice he did,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘I’d have done it too, if they’d asked.’

  He hacked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat it into the fire. Trace particles of acid made it fizz angrily against the coals.

  ‘I could protest,’ Gunnlaugur said. ‘Blackmane has a Blood Claw waiting in the wings as well, one he’s eager to give us to knock into shape. That would make us six – enough to hunt again.’

  Váltyr snorted.

  ‘That’s what we’re reduced to now?’

  Gunnlaugur nodded.

  ‘Plenty of packs are running with losses,’ he said. ‘Every Great Year more come back diminished. Remember when Hjortur died? Remember how shocked we were? Tell me truly, would you be shocked now to hear of a vaerangi dying on the hunt?’

  Váltyr grinned.

  ‘If it was you, yes.’

  Gunnlaugur didn’t return the smile. He stared into the fire, and the blade spun and flashed absently in his fingers.

  ‘I’ll take the Blood Claw,’ he said. ‘We need new blood, and he’ll learn quickly from Olgeir. But as for him…’

  Váltyr looked steadily into Gunnlaugur’s eyes.

  ‘Blackmane will choose,’ he said.

  Gunnlaugur nodded slowly.

  ‘That he will.’

  He stilled the movement of the dagger.

  ‘Our Young King,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Barely fanged. What in Hel are we coming to, brother?’

  For a moment it looked as though Váltyr had an answer. Then the blademaster shook his sleek head.

  ‘I really am the wrong person to ask,’ he said.

  For Margaux, who believes.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Cover illustration by Slawomir Maniak

  Maps by David Annandale and Adrian Wood.

  Colour illustrations by Rhys Pugh.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

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  ISBN 978-0-85787-701-7

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