by Ben Counter
It had to be the Grey Knights. Because if anyone could survive long enough to face Ghargatuloth in battle, it would be them.
The fast strike cruisers Valour Saturnum and Vengeful carried over two hundred and fifty Grey Knights, as large a force as could be moved quickly enough through the vastness of the Segmentum Obscurus. Lord Inquisitor Lakonios of the Ordo Malleus was in ultimate command but once the drop-pods were launched and the atmosphere of Khorion IX was breached, it was the Grey Knights themselves who gave the orders.
Grand Master Ganelon, who had personally killed the Vermin King of Kalentia when still a justicar, landed well off-centre in the thick of the daemon army. With nearly a hundred Grey Knights under his command he fought a valiant battle of survival against wave upon wave of daemons, back-to-back and completely surrounded. Marine after Marine died under sorcerous lightning or the talons of rampaging greater daemons and Ganelon himself began the Prayer of Purification, readying the souls of his men for the inevitable journey after death to join the Emperor in the final battle against Chaos.
The Marines under Grand Master Malquiant smashed into the edge of the crucified forest and formed a fearsome spearhead of seventy Grey Knights, tipped with the Terminator-armoured assault squads and ultimately the sanctified lightning claws of Malquiant himself. Huge portions of the horde swarmed to blunt the attack but those who bypassed the Malquiant's Terminators were cut to pieces by the massive, well-ordered crossfires from the Purgation and Tactical squads that followed. Malquiant's assault drained vast numbers of daemons from the forest, bleeding Ghargatuloth's horde dry in an awesome display of sheer bloody-minded aggression. But the horde was too vast and the broken terrain slowed the assault - Malquiant knew he would not reach the objective, and could only do what he could for his battle-brothers by forcing the bulk of the horde away from the barrows. As the assault ground to a halt Malquiant turned it into a killing zone, overlapping fields of fire and launching counter-assaults into anything that got through.
Grand Master Mandulis had landed closest to the barrows. Along with Squad Chemuel and Squad Martel, and Squad Justinian's tactical team who arrived in time to help cover the advance, Mandulis made the first strike into Ghargatuloth's lair. Over the static-filled vox he learned of Ganelon's sacrifice and Malquiant's relentless but bogged-down assault, and knew as he had somehow always known that it was up to him. Those who could told him that the strength within him was the Emperor's and that with His will he would prevail. Then Mandulis led the charge up the slopes of the barrows and all contact was lost, as sorcery flickered like lightning in the clouds ahead and the daemon horde began to sing the praises of their master.
THE CREST OF the barrow was lined with bodies whose skeletons had been deformed into tall spears of flesh and bone from which hung pennants of skin rippling in the hot, blood-damp breeze. The pennants were emblazoned with symbols that would have burned the eyes of lesser men - Mandulis recognised the same sigils that had been carved into the skin of Ghargatuloth's cultists and written in blood on the floors of their temples.
Beyond the crest of the barrow, something huge roared. Mandulis, his gunmetal armour now black with blood and smoke coiling from the charred twin barrels of his storm bolter, turned to see the Grey Knights who had followed him. One Terminator from Squad Martel was down, along with several from Squad Justinian who had followed in the path blazed by Mandulis. Justinian himself had lost an arm and his helmet had been wrenched off by the gnarled hands of a daemon - his face was streaked with grime and his breathing was ragged and bloody.
Further back, Chemuel was forming a cordon to protect Mandulis's men from a counterattack. Mandulis had no doubt that Justicar Chemuel would sell his life at the foot of the barrow, holding back the daemonic tide with flamers and psycannon. It was a good and honourable way to die, but it would mean nothing if Mandulis could not press home the attack now.
'Martel! With me!' voxed Mandulis. The captain ran up the slick earth of the barrow, his Terminators following. 'Grace be with you, brother. Over the top.'
Under cover from Justinian, Mandulis and Squad Martel charged over the crest of the barrow. Before them stretched the whole barrows complex, a series of concentric circular mounds surrounding a ruined stone tower like the stump of a huge tree. Twisted trees, once Ghargatuloth's most loyal cult leaders, grew in tormented tangles everywhere, forming knots of screaming, blackened flesh. In the depressions between the mounds, blood had drained into deep moats, blood that churned as something massive writhed beneath the ground.
As Mandulis watched, the ground seethed and he saw pale shapes clawing their way from the earth. Stone coffins broke the surface and spilled mouldering bones and grave goods onto the ground. So massive was the evil beneath the barrows that those who had originally been buried there, thousands of years ago before Khorion IX had ever been discovered by the Imperium, were clawing their way from their graves to get away from it.
Mandulis led the charge. As he ran full pelt down the reverse slope of the first barrow there was a titanic eruption of earth nearby and something pale, towering and monstrous burst from the surface. A wave of daemonic sorcery washed over everything and the wards tattooed onto Mandulis's skin burned white-hot as they fought off the daemon's magic. He saw a hunched, twisted body, with a foul distended stomach, rotting skin sprouting feathers, and a long neck from which hung a wickedly grinning beaked head. Wings of blue fire spread from its back as it lunged and stamped down on Brother Gaius, shattering the Grey Knight's leg with a taloned foot. Storm bolter fire streaked up at it and Brother Jokul's psycannon punched holes into its decaying chest, but it just shrieked with joy as it picked up Gaius and tore him in two with its beak.
'Press on!' yelled Mandulis into the vox. 'Brother Knights, with me! Chemuel, Justinian, move up and give cover!'
Mandulis heard Gaius die over the vox, the Grey Knight's last breaths gurgling prayers of hate as he hacked at the greater daemon with his Nemesis weapon. Brother Thieln, Justinian's flamer Marine, died a moment later, cut in two by a huge rusted metal glaive wielded by a second greater daemon that tore itself out of the slope of the barrow.
Ghargatuloth's inner circle of daemons - Lords of Change, the cultists called them, generals of the Change God's armies - were bursting from the barrows to slaughter the Grey Knights who dared attack the Prince of a Thousand Faces. This was the heart of Ghargatuloth's trap. Mandulis had known it would end like this - a mad charge in the faint hope that the Grey Knights would reach Ghargatuloth in enough numbers to stand a chance of defeating him.
A daemon erupted from the ground close by, showering Mandulis with blood and earth. Captain Martel lunged in with his halberd, spearing the avian daemon through the thigh. Mandulis ducked the staff it swung, sorcerous lightning arcing off his armour and pushing his antipsychic wards to the limit. He swung his sword into the heart of the iridescence and the daemon's head was sheared clean off, the severed neck spewing viscous, glowing blue gore onto the ground.
Mandulis strode on as bolter fire and lightning streaked everywhere. He waded through the waist-deep gore of the moat and scrambled up the crumbling earth of the next barrow, crunching through ancient graves.
He could hear voices whispering and screaming inside his skull, a babble of madness that would have swamped a lesser man's mind. But the mind of a Grey Knight was built around a hard core of pure, depthless faith. Where other men had fear, the Grey Knights had resolve. Where others had doubt, Mandulis had faith. An Imperial guardsman, no matter how courageous or pious, still had that unprotected hollow of despair, greed, and terror at the heart of his soul. A Grey Knight did not. Ghargatuloth's mind tricks broke against Mandulis's mind like waves against rocks.
That was why it had to be the Grey Knights assaulting Khorion IX. The Lords Militant could assemble armies hundreds of millions strong, but not one of those Guardsmen would have kept his mind for a minute under the gaze of Ghargatuloth. So it was up to the Grey Knights, and now it
was up to Mandulis.
Glowing hands were reaching from beneath the soil, large enough to pick up Brother Trentius and hurl him so hard that his body smashed into the stone tower at the centre of the barrows. One of the daemons held a staff of bloodstained black wood, pink lightning spilling from the bundle of skulls nailed to its top, arcing off power armour, blasting Marines off their feet where the other greater daemons could move in for the kill.
Squad Chemuel were buying time with their lives. They were surrounded, the towering avian daemons ablaze with blessed burning fuel and smoking from holes blasted by psycannon rounds. Chemuel himself had drawn his Nemesis weapon, which the artificers on Titan had fashioned into a spear, and was stabbing at the nearest daemon even as it tore off his other arm.
Squad Justinian had tried to keep pace with Mandulis and Martel but their charge had faltered. Justinian himself died in a sea of pink fire that boiled up from below, dragged down by daemon talons and torn apart. His Marines were scattered by the daemon that rose from the fire, wielding a great spiked metal block on a long chain that scythed through two Marines before their battle-brothers could turn and riddle the daemon with storm bolter fire.
Mandulis scrambled up the slope of the final barrow. Mattel's Terminators, only a handful of them left now, turned to cover Martel and Mandulis. The swarm of lesser daemons broke over the far barrow and poured into the complex to join their master in a waterfall of daemons' flesh. The last sight Mandulis had of Justicar Chemuel was of his body being thrown by a greater daemon into the advancing tide, to be played with and torn apart like prey Mandulis pressed on. The ground itself was fighting him, collapsing beneath his feet into great fissures. The tower loomed overhead, ancient stones spilling off its ruined walls, and beneath him the pure hatred reached a screaming pitch as Ghargatuloth tried to force his way into Mandulis's mind.
The daemon prince would not succeed. That meant he would have to stoop to defending himself personally. And that was Mandulis's only chance.
The tower was shattered and thrown into the air in a shower of stone. The ground tore open and Mandulis dug his feet into the crumbling earth as the storm tore over him.
The sky rotted and turned black. A Shockwave of corruption ripped outwards and turned the landscape of Khorion IX into tortured, screaming flesh. Mandulis glimpsed Captain Martel being picked up by the howling wind and thrown into the sky and out of sight, fire still spitting from his storm bolter.
In the centre of the storm a huge, dark column shot up from the site of the tower, so tall it punched through the black clouds overhead. It was a spear of twisted flesh, something living but never alive, and it was accompanied by a seething chorus of pure madness that tore at the barriers of Mandulis's mind with such frenzy that Mandulis, for the first time in his long life, felt a spark of doubt that he would hold out against the assault.
He crushed that doubt and held his Nemesis sword in both hands, storm bolter forgotten because not even holy bullets could harm something like this.
The eyes of the storm swept over Grand Master Mandulis and suddenly the air was calm, the cacophony of screams clear and horrible, the assault on Mandulis's mind a pure keening.
The true face of the Prince of a Thousand Faces looked down on Mandulis. The grand master of the Grey Knights mouthed a final, silent prayer, and charged.
Chapter Two
TETHYS
ONE THOUSAND YEARS passed. The Imperium endured -men and women died in uncountable numbers to ensure that. Armageddon was lost to the orks. The Damocles Gulf was conquered and strange new species were encountered. The Sabbat Worlds were overrun by Chaos and an immense crusade launched to reclaim them.
Stratix died in screaming plague, Stalinvast in the fiery extremes of the Exterminatus. The Eye of Terror opened and hell poured out through the Cadian Gate. The Inquisition continued to torture itself for the good of mankind, the Adeptus Terra tried to unpick laws and declarations from the will of the Emperor. The warp created new hells outside real space. Whole systems were lost in madness and new ones settled in their hundreds.
There were only two constants in the galaxy. The first was the Imperium's bloody-minded refusal to die beneath the weight of heresy, secession, alien aggression and daemonancy. The second was war - an unending, merciless, and all-consuming tide of warfare that formed the Imperium's bane, function, and salvation.
One thousand years of hatred, one thousand years of war. Enough time for a great many new horrors to rise, and for old ones to be all but forgotten.
WHEN THE FIRST shot had hit, Justicar Alaric had thought of the final days - the days when the Emperor would be whole again, when the heroes of the Imperium and the soldiers of its present would be led into war as one, and the final reckoning would come.
With the second shot, the one that punched through his leg and tore up into his abdomen, he had realised that he was not dead and that the final days would not come for him yet. He remembered red runes winking maddeningly on the back of his eye, telling him that his blood pressure was falling and both his hearts were beating erratically, that two of his lungs had been punctured by the shot to the chest and his abdomen was filling up with blood. He remembered dragging himself into cover as overcharged las-shots ripped into the stone floor beside him.
He remembered the shame as his consciousness drained into a dim grey oblivion, willing his limbs to move so he could loose a last volley of shots against the cultists who had wounded him so badly.
That was what Alaric felt as he awoke again. Shame. It reminded him of how young he was compared to some of the grand masters who had walked the halls of Titan. He had the crystal-pure mental core of a Grey Knight, that was certain, but wrapped around it was a mind that still had much to learn. Not about fighting - that knowledge had been sleep-taught to him so deeply that it had displaced any memory of Alaric's childhood - but about the great discipline that meant not even shame, rage, or honour could get in the way of a grand master's sense of duty to his Emperor.
Alaric was all but submerged in a vat of clear fluid, a concoction of Titan's apothecaries that helped flesh heal and kept infections at bay. He felt tubes snaking all around him, feeding medicines into his veins and sending information back to the cogitators he could hear thrumming and clicking away around him. He was bathed in light coming from lumoglobes arranged in a circle on the stone ceiling above him. The whole of the Grey Knight fortress-monastery was carved from the same dark grey living stone of Titan, snaking deep beneath the moon's surface in layer upon layer of cells, chapels, training and instruction halls, medical facilities, parade grounds, armouries and, deepest of all, the tombs of every Grey Knight who had fallen in battle during the Chapter's ten thousand year history.
Alaric turned his head to see the brass-cased cogitators quietly spewing sheet after sheet of paper onto which were scribbled the long, jagged ribbons of his life signs. The medical facility was one he had been to before - it was here that he had received the hexagrammic wards that formed a thin lattice of blessed silver beneath his skin. Medical orderlies were moving quietly between other recovery tanks and auto-surgeon tables, checking on the patients - some were troops or other personnel from the Ordo Malleus. Others were the inhumanly tall and muscular forms of Alaric's fellow Grey Knights. The facility was like a vaulted cellar, the ceiling low and oppressive, the stone cold and sweating. The lumoglobes casting pools of light around the patients, surrounded by shadow where cogitators and hygiene servitors hummed gently.
Alaric recognised Brother Tathelon, one arm blown off at the elbow and his body covered in tiny shrapnel scars. Interrogator Iatonn, who had accompanied Inquisitor Nyxos in the assault, lay with his entrails exposed as the dextrous metallic fingers of the auto-surgeon worked to knit his innards back together. Alaric had seen Iatonn fall, a blade plunged through his gut. Nyxos, as far as Alaric knew, had made it out unharmed, but of course Alaric had not seen the final stages of the assault.
One of the orderlies, on
e of the blank-faced, mind-scrubbed men and women the Ordo Malleus used for menial work, saw Alaric was awake and came to inspect the life signs streaming from the cogitators. Alaric stood up in the tank, pulling electrodes from his skin and needles from his veins. The black carapace, a hard layer beneath the skin of his chest and abdomen, had a large ragged hole in it where the first shot had broken through his armour and Alaric could see through the crystallized wound to the surface of the bony breastplate that had grown together from his ribs. There was another hole, larger, in the meat of his thigh, with a tight channel of internal scar leading up into his abdomen. He could feel the wounds inside him but they were almost healed thanks to his internal augmentations and the Chapter apothecarion. He was covered in smaller scars, burns from where his armour had become red-hot from the weight of las-fire slamming into it, cuts and gouges from shards of ceramite, newly lain over the old scars from previous battle wounds and surgical procedures.
Apothecary Glaivan was hurrying over from the far end of the facility. Glaivan was ancient, one of the few Grey Knights currently in the Chapter who had reached the extended old age a Space Marine's enhancements could grant him. Glaivan's hands had been replaced long ago with bionic armatures that gave him a surgical touch far finer than human hands, with splayed fingers tipped with scalpels and pincers. Grey Knights usually wore their power armour when outside their cells or at worship, but Glaivan had long since left his battlegear behind. Beneath the long white apothecary's robes his body was braced with steel and brass, and his redundant organs had been removed to leave Glaivan a shell of a Marine. His face was long and so heavily lined it was hard to believe there had once been a younger man in there. Glaivan was more than four hundred years old, all but the first handful of those having been spent in service to the Grey Knights and the Ordo Malleus.
