The ropes of fate unwound before Malfallax, spinning and snapping in his blinded mind’s eye. Impossible!
Rafen roared and broke free of the beast’s grip, shattering claws as big as scimitars and ripping scabbed skin into rags. He moved at the speed of wrath, an unstoppable bullet of red. The Space Marine’s spirit plunged into the rage-sea about him, and there he found the glittering beacon of the Holy Lance. From the slime of the mud swamp, the weapon flew to him, crossing the distance to his waiting grip in an eye-blink. Golden fire, shards of lightning dazzling like fragments of suns, ripped from the air and collected at the hollow heart of the teardrop blade. The weapon was awake, the beating pulse of the sacred spear tasting Rafen’s holy anger and knowing it as true.
Malfallax launched itself at him, leading with warp blade, opening rents in reality with cerise darts of fire; it threw the veil of the Twisting Path at the Blood Angel, but every attack fluttered and died against the glory of the Telesto lance. The daemon saw its fate-path curl into black formlessness and cried out in despair.
A wash of mellifluent light flared, and for a brief moment Rafen’s battle-ravaged crimson wargear was replaced with golden armour, crested with wings made of white steel. The righteous vengeance of his primogenitor stared out from Rafen’s ice-blue eyes and carried retribution into the Chaos spawn’s heart.
The Spear of Telesto entered the Malfallax’s chest and sank into the writhing morass of corruption inside. Rafen pressed forward, forcing the blade through the beast’s gut, up through the decayed lungs and organ matter, piercing the withered black meat of its heart. The creature screamed to the clouds, and still the Blood Angel advanced, pressing the haft of the weapon into the dying enemy until the teardrop burst from Malfallax’s back, between his drooping, bloodless wings.
‘I… am… undeath!’ it sputtered. ‘You cannot kill a child of the warp.’
‘Begone!’ Rafen bellowed, his fangs flashing. ‘Your cursed realm awaits!’
‘Aaaaaaaaa–’ Malfallax’s death rattle was deafening from its dozen mouths. ‘You have not won,’ spat some of them. ‘Your rage will be your ending–’
‘Die!’ Rafen shouted, one final shove of the spear cutting the daemon’s link to its fleshy vessel. Streaks of sizzling ectoplasm burst out of Stele’s carcass, ripping away through the blood-misted air and flashing into nothing; glistening jags of ethereal warp matter, unable to sustain permanence for even a second on the human plane of reality, banged and vanished, taking the weave of the creature’s wrecked self screaming back into the madness of the immaterium.
The mutant body turned to powdery black stone, trapping the lance inside a deformed statue. Rafen tore at the spear and it went hot in his grip, giving out a shock wave of heat that obliterated the ashen form.
‘Wait,’ he cried, a sudden shadow of fear passing through him; but his call came too late. Like a tornado made of nails, the black ash exploded outward in a perfect concentric ring, each tiny particle of the contaminated matter impregnated with the void-born antipathy of the Ruinous Powers. A surge of mad hate passed through Rafen and threw him into the air. The tide of rancour moved over the square, touching every single Blood Angel on the surface of Sabien, tearing the veneer of humanity from each of them, debasing the Space Marines. The noble character and high honour of the Sons of Sanguinius fled before a madness that made them all animals. Malfallax’s laughter echoed as his death curse exposed the insanity of the Flaw in his enemies, and to a man they fell into the horrific grip of the red thirst.
It was not battle; it was butchery.
Among the gales of driving rain and cracks of thunder, men fell in their dozens under the frenzy of the Blood Angels. Still-beating hearts were torn from the chests of helot troopers and crushed like ripe fruits, the nectar of heavy arterial blood drained into gaping, hungry mouths. Blood Angels nuzzled at the throats of corpses, fans of crimson covering their chins and necks, barking and growling at one another like jackals fighting over fresh carrion. Lakes of vitae poured into the square, turning the damp air sharp with the rusty, metallic tang of its scent. Blood, blood and blood; there was no end to it, torrents of the rich red fluid slicking the mud around the feet of the combatants.
The errant slave warriors were not the only ones to come to murder by the rage of the maddened Astartes; Word Bearers found themselves shocked silent from their impious revels as the Sons of Sanguinius threw all caution to the wind and fell on them in waves. The Blessed of Lorgar faced foes that were little more than a force of nature now, a living, breathing, killing storm of men without fear or compunction. The Blood Angels were berserkers, spirits of scarlet destruction that gave no quarter and asked none in return.
Warmaster Garand shot hellbolts into the bodies of the red-armoured Astartes that came in range, but the death’s head shells did little to stop the crazed tide. Blood Angels with limbs missing and great fists of meat torn from them still roared on in battle frenzy, the light of humanity inside them extinguished by the Malfallax’s parting gift, its ruinous hate wave. The Witch Prince of Helica had seen this sort of behaviour on the battlefield before, but never from a human opponent. In his forays into the Eye of Terror and sorties where the Word Bearers found themselves matched with other followers of the eightfold way, Garand had been cursed with the misfortune to fight alongside the World Eaters. Madmen among a culture of psychotics, the berzerker bands killed ally and foe alike in their unending lust to claim skulls for the Skull Throne of the Blood God. The Warmaster saw the same stripe of insanity here and now among the Astartes legion, a revelry in the slaughter for slaughter’s sake.
‘They fight like Khorne himself,’ grated one of Garand’s lieutenants. ‘I have never seen the like…’
‘I have,’ spat Garand, and he snarled with anger. ‘The warp take this blighted scheme. That daemon wretch has fled the field.’
Hymnals from the Unhallowed Books were turned into gurgling screams as the wild Blood Angels assault touched the Word Bearers line and necks were torn open. Garand watched in fury as a squad of his handpicked aspirants vanished under a surge of red armour, falling like cut timbers.
‘Lord. Lord!’ cried a voice, and he glanced down from his vantage point as a war-priest crashed toward him through the melee. ‘Lord, the veil has closed to us!’
In his anger, Garand grabbed the Word Bearer and dragged him to his eye level. ‘Speak plainly, fool.’
The Space Marine writhed in his grip. ‘Our summonings have been ended, Lord. Every daemonform we called to be for the battle has fallen dead and inert!’
‘Malfallax.’ Garand released the war-priest, cursing the Lord of Change’s name over and over. ‘That pestilent wraith. This is his doing!’
‘But how?’ demanded the lieutenant.
Garand swept his hand about. ‘It drew back its essence when the host-body perished, and with it all the warp-matter from the field of battle. Nothing remains. We are becalmed, lost to the empyrean here.’ He shoved the war-priest aside and snatched at his lieutenant. ‘Our battle here is ended. Rally. Rally!’
‘Lord, you cannot mean to–’
‘Retreat?’ The word thundered from his lips. ‘The mad ones cannot be stopped by our numbers, fool.’ He tore a rod-shaped teleport beacon from the Space Marine’s belt. ‘We go.’
‘No,’ sputtered the war-priest, his ardour overwhelming his better reason. ‘Ever forward, never back! That is the Word Bearers code. We do not retreat.’
Garand struck him with a brutal punch and threw him aside. ‘Imbecile! Leave these freaks to themselves and what will they kill? Each other.’
‘No…’
The Warmaster pressed the activation glyph and felt the warm tingle of the Misericorde’s teleporters reaching for him. His last action on Sabien was to shoot the war-priest in the leg and leave him there for the madmen; punishment enough for daring to speak against the Witch Prince.
Mephiston did not notice the departure of the Word Bearers. Some, those who were injure
d or none too quick to run for the glowing bubbles of the teleport fields, died the moment they turned their backs on the Blood Angels, their meat and their armour joining the endless slurry of corpses littering the ruined landscape. Perhaps, in some far distant corner of his night-black soul, the part of Mephiston that was still the man who had been Brother Calistarius existed. That tiny fragment of lucidity cried and screamed for the red thirst to abate, desperately trying and failing to halt Mephiston’s headlong rush into the bosom of the black rage.
On Armageddon, the Lord of Death had been transformed after seven days and seven nights of wrestling the gene-curse, but now even his iron will had snapped, caught in the maelstrom of bloodlust that filled his soul. He was not conscious of the hot weapons in his hands, only that he could kill and kill and kill with them, unstoppable and furious in the glory of it.
‘Mephiston!’
The name meant nothing to him; he had no identity now, only an all-consuming hate.
‘Mephiston, heed me. Reject the darkness.’ A red shape moved into his blurred vision. ‘Reject it!’
With an incoherent howl, Mephiston dropped his force sword on the man-form, seeing only the pulsing flesh and hearing the beat of a warm heart inside. The mindblade Vitarus met a rod of golden light and stopped dead, the power of the impact rocking the Lord of Death back on his heels. Fangs flared, Mephiston pressed against the glittering haft and for the first time, he saw who dared to defy him.
Rafen crossed the Holy Lance, blinking away the sparks that emerged where Mephiston’s sword scraped back and forth. The barbed tip of the blade was at Rafen’s neck and he felt the icy cold of the crystalline blade touch his skin and open it. The Space Marine’s blood pooled in the lee of his clavicle and glistened on the sword tip.
‘Raaaaaaa!’ There was no humanity in the Lord of Death’s gaze.
‘Mephiston!’ It was the Spear of Telesto that had protected him, Rafen was sure of it. When Malfallax’s hate had consumed all his battle-brothers, he alone kept his mind intact, the warm touch of the lance clearing his vision of the suffocating rage. It was he alone who could stem the tide of the madness, before his comrades tore each other apart. ‘Step back from the abyss. In the name of Sanguinius, release your rage!’
Golden light gushed from the spear and struck Mephiston like a physical blow. He staggered backward, his sword falling away, the dull glitter of insanity cast from his sight. All around them, the roars of frenzy and murder subsided into the rushing murmur of the rains. The water sluiced spilt blood from the Librarian’s face and chest as he looked up from his hands and into Rafen’s eyes.
‘You…’ It was difficult for Mephiston to speak at first, the words hard and heavy in his fogged mind. ‘You reclaimed me from the brink… How?’
The spear’s bright colours began to fade, growing quiescent. ‘I do not know,’ Rafen admitted. ‘I was only the instrument. My hand was guided…’
The warrior-psyker shook off the lingering taint of the thirst and shuttered it away deep within. He watched Rafen examine the silent lance, his mailed fingers tracing the shape of the carving of their primarch. The lad had, for one moment, touched the soul of the most holy weapon, and with it he had drawn his kinsmen back from the edge of a soul-killing void. Although his expression betrayed nothing, inwardly Mephiston marvelled at the potential of one who was so blessed with the touch of the Pure One.
EPILOGUE
The sky had begun to rain ruby tears when the rescue ships blasted down through the cloud cover. The grim faces of the Space Marines from the Europae told the tale of their inner thoughts. They saw the carnage that lay about in the city streets and did not speak of it. None of them would shame their brothers by asking after what had taken place there beneath the curtain of grey clouds, while the battle barge and the Chaos warship went back and forth with salvos of laser fire and missiles.
Rafen watched as Mephiston accepted the report of a veteran sergeant with a solemn, serious mien. A lucky hit from the Europae’s main guns had torn open a wound in the Misericorde that vented directly into her weapon store, and the red-hued battleship had been hobbled. There had come a moment, the sergeant said, when something peculiar happened to the Word Bearers ship; the codicers and Librarians aboard Europae had cried out as one when the shock of something horrible resonated out from the shrine world below, a spillage of a black and potent evil. Misericorde had felt the undertow from the warp schism as well and things had died aboard the enemy ship from the pain of the passing. It was all the barge’s captain had needed to press the advantage, and soon after the Word Bearers, the proud and arrogant demagogues who swore they would never fall back, disengaged from the fight and made best speed to the outer face of the debris ring. Her engines damaged, Europae was unfit to catch the Chaos craft and so the crew watched Misericorde reach free space and fall into the phantasm of a skull-formed warpgate. The snarling face hung in the dark for long seconds and then faded.
Rafen glanced at the dull sky and then to the Librarian. ‘Is this victory, Lord Mephiston?’
The Lord of Death walked away toward the waiting Thunderhawks. ‘For now,’ he said quietly.
They stayed in orbit for another solar week while the Chapter serfs and indentured crew expedited Europae’s repairs. Task forces of Space Marines expert in vacuum environments were sent out into the disc of fragments that marked the site of Bellus’s infernal death, charged with searching the wreckage for any survivors or materials of interest to the Chapter. Those few sealed escape pods that were found contained panicked groups of Shenlongi citizens, members of Arkio’s thousand who had broken when the fighting had started.
The Blood Angels treated them in the manner of all enemies of the Imperium, offering them the choice of bolter or airlock. Most chose the former, weeping on their knees in the name of Rafen’s brother as they died from point-blank headshots. One of the teams located the hardened steel module from the interior of Bellus that housed the ship’s progenoid capsules. Many of the clerics aboard Europae were of the opinion that the gene-seeds were tainted and fit only for the fires of the fusion furnace, but Mephiston spoke otherwise. The vital organs were placed in secure holding for the journey back to Baal; it would be Lord Commander Dante alone who would decide the fate of the pods of genetic matter.
Rafen thought on this and wondered. Did his old mentor Koris’s soul still hide somewhere in his progenoid gland? And what of Bennek, Simeon and the others? Would they live again one day, or be cursed by proximity to Arkio’s insurrection?
The Blood Angel knelt in a small sub-chancel off the central transept of the Europae’s main chapel. The vast chamber mirrored the one aboard the Bellus in line and form, although the decoration, the stained glass and the scripture across the walls and mosaic floor were different. Being there made Rafen feel strangely displaced: it was almost as if he were in some parallel world, an alternate version of the now where paths had been different and outcomes altered. He heard footsteps approaching behind him and raised his head, for one giddy moment expecting to see Arkio coming toward him – not the golden, winged avatar, but the strong, proud Space Marine he had met on Cybele.
Mephiston slowed to a halt and nodded to Rafen. The psyker’s battle armour was absent now, and instead he wore the sacred robes of his high order. ‘Brother,’ he said, by way of greeting.
Rafen returned a slow nod. ‘My lord.’ He went to stand, but Mephiston shook his head, and bade him remain where he was. ‘What do you wish of me?’
For a moment, the psyker was silent. ‘We lick our wounds, Rafen, in our own ways we heal and move on. The Chaplains tell me you have not left the chapel in days.’
‘No,’ Rafen admitted. ‘I felt it… necessary.’
‘Many would agree. After the ceremonies for the fallen and the rituals of purgation, your battle-brothers have spoken to me of the need to expunge this sorry incident from our chronicles.’
‘That would be a mistake,’ Rafen said quietly. ‘To do that would mean we
have learned nothing.’
Mephiston continued. ‘The ship is ready to depart, and I have ordered the astropaths to make space for Shenlong. It will be… necessary to expunge any lasting traces of the heretic Stele’s plans.’
‘You will destroy the forge-world.’ It was not a question.
‘Exterminatus,’ breathed the Librarian. ‘A sad but inevitable conclusion.’ He glanced up at the altar in the main section of the chapel. Held in a magnetic field bottle was the Spear of Telesto, quiet now but still dazzling as it slowly turned about its own axis.
‘Am I to share that fate as well?’ Rafen asked in a level voice. ‘I am no more or less tainted than the people of that wretched sphere.’
‘Some would argue thus,’ Mephiston admitted. ‘There are voices from Baal that counsel your execution along with the loyalist survivors gathered from Sabien. They are afraid that you may take the same path as Arkio. The knowledge that you were able to wield the Holy Lance…’
‘Briefly, lord. Only briefly.’
The psyker eyed him. ‘Indeed. But cooler heads have prevailed. Your dedication and honour to our Chapter, however unorthodox, was unparalleled. Commander Dante will give you an audience when we make home port, but rather than hold until that day, he has given me leave to grant you a field promotion in respect of your selflessness. The leadership of a full company of men is yours. The late Captain Simeon’s command, the Sixth.’
Rafen let out a breath. ‘With your permission, lord, I must respectfully decline Commander Dante’s great accolade.’
‘You refuse?’
He nodded. ‘If I am to earn captaincy, it will be on my terms. I do not feel I deserve such rank… not yet.’
‘Then what am I to do with you, lad? This will not sit well.’
The Space Marine looked up at the Librarian. ‘May I ask a favour instead, then?’
Deus Sanguinius Page 24
