by Steve Parker
Captain Elgrist turned to face Qree once more.
‘Your duty is done and done well, lieutenant. One has returned. Another shall leave with you.’ Here, he indicated Karras with a nod. Qree looked over, caught Karras’s eye, and bowed. Karras nodded back.
‘Chapter-serfs will attend your crew while Brother Karras says his goodbyes,’ Elgrist continued. ‘Your shuttle will be refuelled.’ He gestured to an archway in the hangar’s north wall. ‘You may take repast in the antechamber beyond that door and make ablutions as you will. Third Company thanks you for your service.’
‘It was my honour, though not my pleasure, my lord.’
‘Go in peace, then, and may you long serve the Golden Throne.’
Qree bowed, at which point Elgrist turned and strode to the head of the four sergeants. At a word, he led them to the great arched corridor that dominated the western wall and would take them towards the heart of the crypt-city. As the sergeants and the sarcophagus passed beneath the sculpted arch, the remaining battle-brothers of Third Company turned as one and marched in ordered lines, following their captain and the body of Brother Stephanus out of the massive hangar. Karras and Cordatus watched them go.
‘A day of saddened hearts,’ said Karras.
‘And yet we are blessed,’ said his khadit. ‘Most that fall in Deathwatch service are never recovered. While the gene-seed was ruined before it could be extracted, he shall at least be mummified properly and interred in the holy catacombs of his Chapter world. Would that every brother could be honoured so, but it is the exception rather than the rule.’
These last words were said pointedly, their message clear:
Be one of the exceptions.
Serfs bearing the Chapter sigil emerged from one of the north passageways and moved towards the shuttle. They were masked with steel – each face a polished, grinning skull – and robed in black, all but one who wore the white robes and gold skull-mask of the upper ranks. This one went to Qree and, after a few words, led him away from the hangar. Moments later, the rest of the shuttle crew descended and followed the other serfs into the antechamber Elgrist had indicated.
‘Do not keep them overlong, my khajar[7],’ said Cordatus. ‘May I assume all your affairs are in order?’
‘I am ready in all but mind,’ answered Karras.
Cordatus smiled. ‘No one is ever truly ready for such a duty, and I can do little more to prepare you. The Deathwatch holds rigidly to its protocols of secrecy, and for reasons I’ll not venture to question. But you will adapt. You are worthy at least to try. Before you leave, the Megir has asked that you attend him.’
The Megir.
First Spectre, Grandmaster of the Order, Lord of Occludus…
…The Eye that Pierces the Veil.
It was very rare for the Megir to see anyone but the First Captain, the High Chaplain, or Cordatus himself. Karras had not laid eyes on the First Spectre since his ascension to that position, but his power could be felt everywhere. Logopol pulsed with it. One could feel it resonating even in orbit. To Karras, it was part of being home.
‘Go,’ said Cordatus. ‘Robed as you are. Enter the great dome barefoot and kneel before him to make your obeisance. When you exit, send me a thought and I shall meet you back here.’
‘It will be as you say, my lord. I go with haste.’
One did not keep the Megir waiting.
Dismissed, Karras left the hangar, taking the great archway by which Third Company had departed. His mind was reeling. He had never imagined the Megir would call upon him before he entered service with the Deathwatch. In truth, he was unsettled and utterly unprepared. His khadit had spoken of the Shariax only occasionally, and all warmth seemed to bleed from him whenever he had.
It is the Throne of Glass from which no First Spectre ever rises alive. It is both the Chapter’s greatest burden and its greatest gift. Without it, all hope of the Great Resurrection is lost. Ah, what a price we pay for faith.
On the very day of his ascension, the First Spectre had gone alone into the darkest depths of Logopol and had never come back. It was always so, a custom thousands of years old, beginning with Corcaedus the Founder who, driven by a vision from the Emperor Himself, had brought his Death Spectres to Occludus.
The vision had shown him exactly where to delve. He had found the great dome – the Temple of Voices – sitting silent, patient, in its vast cavern many kilometres below ground. Within the dome, he found the ancient secret it had kept hidden since before the dawn of the Imperium.
On his command, Logopol had been built directly above it.
So much history. So much significance. The destiny of the Chapter. Its purpose.
Karras didn’t feel ready. Not for this.
But he kept walking.
6
Athio Cordatus watched his khajar emerge into the hangar, dressed now in dark blue fatigues and black boots, flanked by serfs and servitors carrying his wargear and the limited belongings permitted by the Deathwatch.
Karras looked hollow, stunned even. It was clear he had been profoundly disturbed by his time with the Megir. Cordatus didn’t need to ask why. The Megir as Karras would have remembered him was a vision of strength and power, of boundless vitality and an insatiable hunger for victory in battle. Not so the figure that now led the Chapter from his life-leeching throne. There in the depths sat a withered thing, muscles atrophied, bone structure starkly visible beneath skin that was gradually turning black. His beard and hair, white as Occludian snow, had grown long and thin. He no longer moved, no longer spoke with lips and breath. His body was undergoing slow petrifaction. In due course, he would turn completely to stone. The Shariax did this, but the power it offered in return, a power unknown anywhere else in all the worlds of man, made such suffering a dark necessity. The Chapter could not fulfil its destiny without it.
We waited so long for him, thought Cordatus. So many others were lost along the way. But in Lyandro Karras, the calculations, the breeding, the manipulation; it has all come together at last. The sacrifice of the Chapter Masters will not be in vain.
Whatever visions or words the First Spectre had shared with Karras were a matter for the two alone. Cordatus would not ask. He would, no doubt, be summoned below after his khajar left for space. The Megir would share anything he needed to know then.
Cordatus dared not explain the depths of the Chapter’s hopes to Karras. At least, not directly or in any great detail. The sharing of that knowledge would alter the very future it suggested. But there were other methods to steer him along the critical path. Cordatus had seeded several prime futures with a series of psychic messages, each intended to corral Karras in the necessary direction. Only time would tell if those messages were ever received. The act of placing them had taken Cordatus beyond the previous limits of his capabilities. It had stretched him to a point perilously close to absolute psychic collapse, after which, warded or not by his tattoos and holy amulets, he would have been unable to resist possession. There was no thought more chilling to a Librarian: that a daemon of the warp might swallow his soul, claim his body, and turn his powers upon the Order he loved above all else… The word nightmare was hardly adequate.
As Cordatus had scored his messages in the surface of time to come, the Black River had surged and crashed around him, carrying him almost into the Afterworld. But he was not the Mesazar for nothing. Few among even the most powerful Librarians of the Adeptus Astartes would have survived, but among those few Athio Cordatus stood as one.
When you return, my khajar… if you return… it may be I who sits atop the Shariax. I would pray to Terra to be spared such a fate, but it is inevitable, and it is my duty. I shall embrace it for the sake of the Order, though I am a lesser man than the First Spectre, and I may not last as long.
Cordatus watched his khajar march to the middle of the hangar and stop, facing the sleek black shuttle that would take him up to the Adonai. Behind him, the serfs and servitors trundled to a halt. Arranged in ranks on eithe
r side of the hangar, every Space Marine in Logopol, with the exception of the members of Third Company and those others whose duties could not be postponed, stood in attendance, dressed in full plate to honour their brother on his leaving. The mood was grim. This was not like a standard departure. All those present knew the odds were against Karras ever returning, alive or dead.
Cordatus had used Karras’s time below to have the tech-priests dress him in full power armour. The Chief Librarian stood now as a polished, gleaming vision of power and position, his shimmering ceramite replete with purity seals, the sculpted icon of the Crux Terminatus, and several formal pieces inscribed or embossed with details and renderings of his greatest personal glories. From his massive pauldrons, a thick cloak trailed all the way to the hangar floor.
In truth, Cordatus felt overdressed as he looked at his khajar. Karras had donned simple combat fatigues of dark Librarius blue. He seemed almost naked in comparison to the armoured might of the others. But that was as it should be. Instructions from the Deathwatch were explicit: those sequestered into service were to arrive out of armour. They would not wear it again until the taking of Second Oath. To those who had never served, that meant little. But Cordatus remembered his own term of service, despite the intervening centuries. Those days of relentless training without his second skin had made him feel like a damned neophyte again. Karras would not relish it, as he himself had not, but there was purpose behind it. His khajar would come to see that quickly.
Flight Lieutenant Qree, who had since re-boarded the shuttle to make final preparations for take-off, descended the craft’s ramp now and stopped in front of Karras. He bowed low and spoke a few words of greeting. Karras couldn’t manage a smile. He nodded. The lieutenant bowed again, turned sharply and marched back to the shuttle, followed now by Karras’s serfs and baggage servitors. The First Codicier stood alone, the eyes of his battle-brothers on him. It was time.
Cordatus was glad he was here for this. His combat duties in The Cape of Lost Hope – the stellar tip of the local spiral arm – had ended only weeks ago with the detestable dark eldar beaten back at last, though they would return in due course. Cordatus believed the timing to be no accident. Perhaps it was the hand of Fate intervening on his behalf, or perhaps the hand of the Emperor Himself or the countless spirits of humanity’s dead. Whatever the cause, Cordatus had again been able to take a direct hand in steering this warrior on whom so much depended.
Time to bid him farewell.
He marched forwards, stopped before his khajar, met his gaze and offered formal salute. This he did in the ancient manner of the Chapter, left hand held flat at the abdomen, palm up, right hand clenched in a vertical fist resting on the palm of the left. It was the masrahim, the salute of skull and stone. Its meaning was simple, but it was not a salute made lightly: I will honour you in death as I do now in life.
Karras, though still shaken badly by what he had seen in the Temple of Voices, managed to return the salute, eyes locked with those of his teacher, red locked to red.
Cordatus could see the torment there. He knew it all too well himself. Today, for the first time, Karras had seen the Megir upon the Throne of Glass. He was bound to be profoundly disturbed. Cordatus’s own hearts broke every time he went below at the psychic call of his old friend and master.
Better Corcaedus had never found the Shariax.
No. That wasn’t true, and such thought bordered on Chapter heresy. If the vision of the Founder ever came to pass, all the sacrifice in the galaxy would be made worthwhile, even – and it burned Cordatus to concede it – the soul of Lyandro Karras.
‘My khajar,’ said Cordatus. ‘You carry the honour of the Order on your shoulders. The reputation of the Chapter is in your hands. Do not stain it. Serve well. Earn the respect of those around you. Show by your example the strength and quality of the Death Spectres.’
‘It shall be as you command, khadit. They shall know us by our strength and spirit. This I swear on my life.’
Preserve that life, my son, thought Cordatus. Preserve it at any cost.
He did not voice this.
Instead, he placed a hand on Karras’s shoulder and sent a command-pulse to a servitor waiting silently in the shadows. The mind-wiped man-machine ambled forwards, cog-knees whirring and jinking. In its metal pincers it held a weapon, long and slender, of such history and power that it had a soul of its own – and not a mere machine-spirit to be coaxed into operation with oils and litanies, but a soul that burned as bright as any man’s.
‘Arquemann?’ asked Karras in confusion as the servitor stopped on his right.
‘Aye,’ said Cordatus. ‘I entrust it to you now, may you serve each other well in the trials to come.’
‘I-I cannot,’ stammered Karras. This was a thing too great. The weapon, he knew, had once been laid at the feet of the Golden Throne on Terra. The Founder, to whom it had once belonged, had placed it before the Emperor just seconds before receiving his vision. After the Shariax itself, and the bones and armour of Corcaedus, this ancient force sword was the holiest relic on Occludus.
He shook his head and took a staggering step back. ‘Khadit,’ he said. ‘I dare not even touch it.’
‘You can and will,’ ordered Cordatus. ‘The First Spectre commands. You cannot disobey. Please, khajar. Take it with honour and gladness. Arquemann is sensitive to the thoughts of those who wield it, and it will serve you better if you accept it with pride.’
Karras reached out hesitantly, reverently, and touched the flat of the blade. Witchlight coruscated along it as the sword sensed his psychic strength. Karras felt the sword’s spirit probing his own, learning his signature, even… could it be… evaluating him? Was that possible? If so, what was the sword’s assessment? Athio Cordatus had wielded it in battle since the ascension of the Megir. Great honour had been earned in the time since. Did the weapon now rage at this transfer to a lesser warrior?
Karras gripped the hilt and lifted the blade before him. He felt a sharp mental jolt as his power was joined with the blade’s own. Was this acceptance? There was a psychic pulse, a flash of fractured images, of monstrous foes wounded or cut down. Were these the sword’s memories, or glimpses of things yet to be? It was long seconds before he remembered to take a breath.
‘Decline cryostasis on your journey to the Watch fortress,’ Cordatus advised him. ‘Spend those weeks training with the blade. There will be time for you and Arquemann to bond properly on the journey through the warp. Practise with it often and to extremes, and together you will become a force formidable beyond the limitations you thought you had. So it was with me.’
Farewell, proud weapon. No other can fill the gap you leave.
‘You honour me more than I deserve, khadit,’ said Karras, breaking eye contact, looking down in contrition. ‘But then, you have always honoured me more than I deserve.’
Cordatus grinned. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’
The grin was short-lived. He could draw this out no longer. ‘Our time together is again at its end, khajar. We part once more. If destiny wills it, we shall stand together again and speak words of greeting rather than farewell. Such is my fervent hope. Now face your brothers proudly, lift your voice, and call out those words so sacred to our Order.’
Karras slung Arquemann over his head and one shoulder, hanging the sword diagonally across his back by its black harness. He turned to face the Space Marines in their ordered ranks by the south wall and let the sight of them lift his hearts. They were glorious, all of them.
Remember this, he told himself. Hold to it. Remember who you honour.
In a loud, clear voice he called out to those he faced, ‘Fear not death, we who embody it in His name.’
The response erupted like thunder from the throats of all assembled.
‘We fear not Death!’ they bellowed. ‘For we are Death incarnate!’
‘Now go,’ said Cordatus. ‘Depart to honour and glory, scion of the Spectres of Death. And may your deeds be writ
ten in the blood of many foes!’
Cordatus stepped aside, armour plates scraping quietly as he moved. Karras fixed unblinking eyes on the ramp of the black shuttle and marched past him in heavy silence. There was yet much he wanted to say to his khadit, but the time for words was past. He doubted he could have found the appropriate ones to express all he felt.
Instead, as Karras reached the base of the ramp, he paused, then turned and saluted the Master of the Librarius once more, fist on palm, the masrahim.
In response, Cordatus raised a clenched fist into the air and boomed out, ‘The First Codicier!’
Sixty-eight Space Marines raised their armoured right fists as one. ‘The First Codicier!’ they roared, and the words echoed back at Karras from the hangar’s great stone walls.
He turned from them and stalked up the ramp, conscious of the weight of Arquemann and of his duty both. It did not do to dwell on partings. They were hard enough. Instead, he centred his mind on the immediate future. He faced the unknown. Unlike those whose gifts pierced the veils of time, Karras saw only fragments in dreams, misted generalities, blurred visions of possibility and chance almost impossible to distinguish from the typical conjurings of a dreaming mind. His gifts were given more to psychic combat that to scrying.
He knew this much, however:
The Deathwatch would either make him or destroy him.
Athio Cordatus watched the shuttle ramp slowly rise. It sealed with all the dark finality of a sarcophagus lid.
I should be rejoicing, he thought bitterly. This is all as destiny dictates. And yet…
The craft’s engines rose in pitch to a deafening roar. Shakily at first, the shuttle lifted slowly into the air. With a twin burst of flame from the small vents in its nose, it backed out into the open air beyond the hangar mouth. There, a black shadow against a heavy, snow-filled sky, it turned and rose, lifting out of sight on a trail of fire and smoke.
