by Marc
Eventually, the sheer power of Uzziel’s blows began to tell, and he drove the warlock back into a lichen-covered wall. Ailean still tried to pierce Uzziel with his hungry spear, but the Dark Angel grabbed the weapon’s haft with his injured hand and held it fast.
The chaplain longed to sheath his blade in the eldar’s flesh, but couldn’t at such close quarters. Instead, he struck the warlock full in the face with the hilt of his power sword. The blow drove Ailean’s head into the wall with an audible crack, and the warlock joined Ahiezar in the mire of blood.
Wasting no time, Uzziel sheathed his power sword and staggered towards the stasis chest. He was breathing heavily and bleeding from a number of spear wounds. Without further ceremony, the chaplain picked up the long box and all but ripped it in two. He could feel the energy dissipate as the alien device cracked open and the stasis field disappeared.
Reaching inside the shattered chest, Uzziel pulled out a sword encased in a ornate sheath. The shock near overwhelmed him, and he leaned on his own blade for support. Up to this moment, he had been prepared for disappointment and lies. A Fallen Angel could never really be trusted. But how could he have passed up any opportunity to recover the Lion Sword, no matter how remote the chance?
Now he, Uzziel, stood in this alien temple with the very sword in his hand! What a moment!
Uzziel began to pray fervently, thanking the Emperor and Lion El’Jonson for choosing him for this moment. The sword came free of the sheath and shone with a blinding brilliance. The remaining fog and mist burned away in seconds, exposing his surroundings for the first time. Uzziel was alone in the temple, save for the bodies of Ahiezar and Mean. Now Uzziel could see that the once elegant temple was mostly a ruin. The towers that once flanked it had fallen and parts of the roof had caved in. Lichen covered the walls, which somehow glowed with an inner light.
A little calmer now, the chaplain examined the sword. The hilt was carved of gold, in the shape of an angel, its spreading wings forming the weapon’s guard. Overcome by its beauty, Uzziel took the sword to a place where the sun shone through. There it gleamed in the light for the first time in ten thousand years. Uzziel hefted the blade and tried its balance. Perfection. This was a sword of kings, of conquerors. As if in a vision, he could see himself at the head of armies, wielding the unmatched blade and vanquishing the enemies of the Emperor.
His mind swam with heady visions of power and conquest. With this sword none could stand before him. Surely he was chosen! A weapon of greater power even than that wielded by Azrael, Supreme Master of the Dark Angels. Now Uzziel knew his time was upon them all! This was the evidence and the power to silence all his most jealous brethren back at the Rock.
Uzziel gasped involuntarily and laughed aloud that fate had sent him to this place! Soon he would be hailed as the greatest interrogator-chaplain in the Chapter’s history, greater even than the legendary Molocia! All would fall before him, all would bow to him, and not just those of his Chapter.
No, now was the time to put away petty differences of Chapter and creed. The Imperium would be his. Swordbearer, conqueror, first of a new breed of primarch. Giddy with elation and power, Uzziel saw the universe laid bare for his legions, ready for the taking. This was decreed. It must be.
As Uzziel continued to gaze at the gleaming weapon, he noticed an inscription on the blade. This is below your notice, Lord Uzziel, an inner voice chided him, and so persuasive was its tone that he almost ignored the battle-worn lettering. But the small cold presence of his conscience pulled at his mind. Looking closer, he squinted to read the ancient letters. Each word pierced him like a dagger to his heart.
TO LUTHER, FRIEND AND COMRADE-IN-ARMS. MAY YOUR FAITH BE YOUR SHIELD. LEJ.
Uzziel staggered back and dropped the sword. Immediately, its treacherous power was broken, and he realised the full extent of his folly. This was not the Lion Sword, but the Sword of Luther, arch-traitor and most hated of the Fallen Angels. Once a noble weapon, it had been twisted by the power of Chaos as Luther led the Fallen Angels down their doomed path.
And had Uzziel not felt its power, listened to its lies and been ready to make it his own? How could he have been so blind? Tempted by the very sword that had killed the Lion! The chaplain shuddered with horror, thinking of the Lion’s noble sacrifice. What folly! And so many noble eldar dead!
Thoroughly disgusted, steeped in self-loathing, Uzziel carefully sheathed the cursed blade. He would not be tempted again. He would not listen to the now-raging voice. He must, he would deny it!
Inside his helmet, his communicator crackled to life. ‘Interrogator-chaplain, this is Gunship Cestus. Strong eldar reinforcements are heading towards us from the north. What are your orders?’
Uzziel paused a moment. He considered ordering his men away and staying to die at the hands of the eldar. ‘I deserve no better!’ he howled in torment at the sky.
But he could not. As a chaplain and a Dark Angel, he had to face up to his actions. Sighing heavily, he replied at last, activating his communicator link. ‘Tell the troops to fall back by squads to rendezvous point secundus and meet there.’
‘Yes, sir. By the Emperor, it is done.’
Uzziel walked to the stone doorway, where the prone form of the dead librarian lay. He looked out over the battlefield; more bodies lay everywhere. Many of his brethren had fallen today, their lives thrown away because of him and his pride. He had wanted to find the Lion Sword so much that he had let himself be fooled by one of the very traitors who had torn the Dark Angels asunder. Even the heretic had been given a merciful death as well!
Now there would be consequences, of that he was certain.
He considered leaving the sword in the temple, but too many had died for him to go home empty-handed. It was a part of the Chapter’s history and as such belonged in the Rock. Perhaps Asmodai would know what to do with it.
Asmodai. He could not think of the aged Space Marine, the greatest living interrogator-chaplain, without touching his rosarius. Asmodai’s rosarius had only two black pearls, and that was the work of hundreds of years. Uzziel looked at his own black pearl, the source of so much pride just hours ago. Now revulsion filled his soul at the sight of it.
Slowly, Uzziel unclasped his rosarius and slipped off the black gem. He placed it carefully on the hard rock of the temple floor before bringing the heavy boot of his power armour down upon it. The black pearl shattered and Uzziel ground it to bitter dust beneath his foot.
Next time, there would be no doubt.
ANGELS
Robert Earl
IT WAS ALMOST forty summers ago, but I still remember. Sometimes, though, the remembering is hard. In the warmth of a high summer’s sun or in the smog of the inn, surrounded by familiar faces, it seems that it was only a dream or an old man’s tale grown tall with the telling.
But when the wolves came last winter it was as clear as the summer’s sky over the fields. And when Mary lay screaming in her first labour, the memory was the only thing that kept the fear from freezing me.
When it happened, Pasternach was smaller than it is now, much smaller. There was nothing north of the stream but the shadow of the mill, for all of the cottages, and even the workshops, were tucked safely behind the stockade. They huddled around the green, their backs to the world, but between their sturdy gables we could see the battle of distant treetops against the wind.
The stockade itself was higher back then. It had to be, for we had worse to worry about in those days than the prices come harvest time. The Emperor, may the gods protect him, had yet to start clearing the forest hereabouts. And the forest was near.
From time to time, lying in our beds, we would hear cries floating through the darkness of the night, savage cries that were neither human or animal. When they became too much to ignore, the council and the rest of the men would meet on the green.
There, amidst the comforting smells of smoke and stew and dung, they would drink and argue for a day or so. Then they would decide to do w
hat they always decided to do – which was to send out a patrol. But always by daylight and never with very much enthusiasm. Sometimes the patrols would return in triumph carrying with them rabbits or even deer, but mostly they just returned hurriedly.
They were fools to avoid finding the enemy before he found us, but one cannot blame them, not really. Which of us wouldn’t rather pull the blankets up over our heads and hope for the best?
One autumn the shadow of the forest grew longer. Rumours pulsed along the narrow tracks and open rivers of the land, rumours of northern sorcery and a hideous new progeny of the terrible art.
One of the scrawny, haunted-looking rangers who occasionally drifted through on the road to the city stopped for long enough in the village to frighten us all. He told a tale of lights in the sky, great fiery displays to rival the borealis, of villages found mysteriously deserted and gutted by fire, of horribly cloven two-footed tracks in the cooling ash.
After he had left, everybody told everyone else that he had been mad or a liar, and what else could you expect from a ranger? But even I noticed that after this the men of the patrols stayed nearer to home and kept their eyes more firmly shut. They even stopped bringing back game. Then, after Mullens was taken, the patrols from Pasternach stopped altogether.
MULLENS WAS A scarred old bull of a man. He had arrived at the village two years before, still dressed in his patched halberdier’s uniform, and I think that my brother and I were only slightly more overawed by him than our parents were.
Even Alderman Fauser was at a loss for words when the old soldier took his hand in a painful, white knuckled grip and allowed the two massive war dogs that comprised the whole of his luggage to sniff his new neighbour’s breeches.
In spite of his strange manners and southland accent, Mullens soon became popular in Pasternach. His hounds brought down many a wild boar which he would arrange to be roasted for the whole village in return for his fill of ale. When these feasts were finished apart from bones to gnaw and the dying embers of the fire, he would fill our imaginations with blood-curdling tales of death and glory from his time in the Emperor’s great army.
Even more welcome was the fact that he was willing to hire any man who needed the coin. A couple of miles to the west of the village lay a derelict way station with a few neglected fields which Mullens had bought for his retirement. Because he always asked for the villagers’ advice, as well as paying their sons to help him, the whole village took some pride in the way that Mullens rebuilt the crumbling stone walls of the gatehouse and cleared the land that it stood over.
It was some small measure of the affection in which he had become held, then, that when the old soldier didn’t turn up at the village for two whole weeks a patrol went almost willingly to see if anything was amiss with him.
Though I was but young then, I will never forget the grim silence with which they returned to their families that afternoon and the sense of outrage that clung to them like the smell of the smoke. And the sight and sound of Gustav the blacksmith, iron-faced and iron-handed, suddenly choking and rushing into his hut. I tried to convince myself that the agony of sobbing we could all hear from within was the smith’s wife. The thought of this, the hardest of men breaking down, was too unnerving.
None of the men who went to check on Mullens’s farm, then burned it to the ground, ever did tell of what they had found there. Today, all being safely buried in the hallowed ground next to the village shrine, they never will. But over the years I have managed to piece together fragments of whispered conversations or the drunken rambling of men quickly hushed by their fellows. Not much, I grant you, but enough to give some idea of the bloody nightmare those men encountered.
I know that, amongst other things, they found Mullens at the farm – or at least what was left of him. He had been eaten right down to the bone, but even as he fell he had not abandoned his weapon. Skeletal fingers locked desperately around the heft of a bloodied spear. Even now, the image fills me with a kind of horrified wonder.
His dogs were found lying on either side of their master. Their ruined and convulsed bodies bore witness to the desperate resistance they had put up. They had died as they had lived, full of courage and loyalty. Few men can hope for such an epitaph and my eyes sting even now at the memory of those fine animals.
Of the attackers who had committed this foul atrocity, there was scant sign. A few bones, a few fly-encrusted brown stains on the stone of the walls and the splintered wood of the door. It seems that their flesh had tasted as sweet to their companions as any other.
To witness such scenes at first hand must have been like stepping into a waking nightmare – and though it sounds almost perverse to say it, I thank the gods for it. The horror of Mullens’s farm was enough to shock the whole village into wakefulness at last. It was no longer possible to ignore the danger, and all of our lives were changed and reordered overnight.
There was a meeting on the green the next morning. Nobody drank. The only argument was when Frau Henning, our young farrier’s mother, tried to prevent his volunteering to ride to the nearest Empire town for help and men-at-arms. But Gulmar’s father overruled her tears and protestations with a fervour that was close to rage. He was proud of his son’s courage, I think, and didn’t want to deny him the chance to prove it. That pride began to turn into a cancerous mixture of bitterness and regret a few short weeks later. Fuelled by grain alcohol and a nagging wife, it eventually killed him.
Of course we weren’t to know that as we watched father and son bid each other farewell in the clear light of that bright morning. They were alive and together for the last time on this world and perhaps sensing it they shook hands as equals, maybe even friends, for the first time. Gulmar Henning never made it back but at least he didn’t die a child.
As the hoofbeats of the farrier’s borrowed horse faded into the distance, we all stood in a long, solemn silence, broken only by the accusing sobs of the boy’s distraught and inconsolable mother. Then the discussion began and incredibly, insanely it seemed at the time, it was decided to do the unthinkable.
We abandoned the harvest.
THAT YEAR’S AUTUMN wheat was left to ripen then wither outside the palisade, a feast only for the teeming birds and vermin. While our golden lifeblood rotted back into the dark earth, the whole village worked at a fever pitch. The great mill wheel was lifted off its pole and wrestled through the gates, leaving a naked patch on the overgrown stone of the wall. Karsten the miller himself supervised this piece of necessary vandalism with shrill cries and fluttering hands. As he capered around he reminded me, despite his fleshy jowls and shiny head, of a hen that has lost its chicks. Even at that age, though, I had the sense to keep the thought to myself, as I did the private grievance that my brother and I would no longer be able to use the great wooden wheel as our private staircase over the wall into the village.
Most of the work was done in the forest, as more trees were felled to strengthen the stockade. By then I was confined to the village with the rest of the children, but even there I could hear the harsh cracks of axes biting into green wood and the occasional shocking crash of a falling tree. Throughout the next few weeks the sound of the men nibbling away at the edge of the forest became a constant rhythm that we all lived to.
Meanwhile Gulmar Henning’s mother had taken to haunting the parapets in a painfully desperate vigil. She stood silently above the frenetic activity of the village, gaunt and crow-like in a windswept black cloak. She finally broke her silence after three days with a piercing shriek that sent us all rushing to the wall. My eyes followed the line of her trembling arm as it pointed to the east, and I saw it.
There was nothing much, just an orange glow on the horizon. Through the jagged arms of the black forest, the distant flames even looked a little comforting. The fire came from the direction of Groenveldt, thirty miles away, and I wondered aloud, quite innocently and without malice, if they were having a bonfire.
I turned to ask my father, but his t
ight-lipped expression of angry relief silenced me. I left the chill of the parapet and retreated to my bed, confused and afraid. The next day we began to work even harder.
I didn’t have much time to reflect on the strange new turn our lives had taken, which was perhaps just as well. My days were spent with cleaning and splitting feathers for the growing bundles of arrows or spinning the sharpening stone at just the right pace to avoid Gustav the smith’s wrath. My only break from all this was the occasional errand or, much to my disgust, doing the women’s work and drawing the village’s water.
Even though the work was hard, I do remember enjoying it, for the novelty made all of this excitement and panic a great game for a child as young as I was, albeit a slightly uneasy one. I couldn’t understand why everyone was so gloomy and foul-tempered. Even Stanislav the brewer, usually the jolliest and certainly the reddest-faced man in the village, snarled at me when I knocked over a pile of hoops he was finding for the smith.
Then came the night, just as winter was starting to tighten its icy grip on Pasternach and all the land around it, when I did understand.
I WAS SHOCKED FROM my sleep in the steely grey hour before dawn by the awful sound of a man screaming, screaming and never ceasing. I clambered out of the cot I shared with my brother, still too groggy with sleep to be truly alarmed, when my father burst through the door half dressed and crazy-eyed.
Even in the gloom I could see his knuckles were white from the grip he had on his scythe, as sharp and gleaming now as it had ever been. He shouted at my brother and me to get under the bed, but the undercurrent of terror in his voice froze me where I stood. I’d never heard the like before.
As my father charged outside I saw the other villagers dashing to the north wall in the torchlight. Alderman Fauser was already high on the stockade with half a dozen other men, hacking down into the darkness beyond. I was almost as surprised to hear the alderman spitting out such obscene oaths as I was to see the blood that ran from his pitchfork as he pulled it from one of the shadows. My father had his foot on the lower rang of the ladder when he stopped, turned, and bellowed a warning.
