Perhaps that was just as well; Raldoron had never been an outgoing, gregarious spirit. He saw himself as a simple soul, a warrior with a calling to fight for his primarch and his Emperor. What was there to say or to doubt about that?
He slowed as he spotted three of his battle-brothers engaged in a spirited discussion, catching the edges of their conversation.
Captain Nakir, the commander of the 24th, was talking to Furio of the Ninth. The pair of them were stark contrasts, and both distant in their own ways from the typical model of a Blood Angel. Nakir was of technomad stock, his shoulder-length hair black and plaited, his swarthy face forever caught between a killer’s smile and a zealot’s grimace; meanwhile, Furio stood a little taller and wider than the other captain. Some joked that he would be better suited to wear the Cataphractii armour of the Terminator squads instead of the standard warplate that seemed hard-pressed to encompass his stature. Furio’s hairless head was pale, showing his origins as an iceborn from Baal’s northern polar zone.
Nakir and Furio were addressing a third officer, and even from the back Raldoron knew immediately that it was Amit, captain of the Fifth. Like Nakir and his comrade, Raldoron’s power armour was in good order and dressed in a manner befitting the summit that was about to take place. The First Captain had paused before ascending to the dome in order to gather up his power sword and ceremonial scabbard for such occasions. It seemed fitting; whatever the outcome, a campaign had just ended and that was cause for observance and adherence to protocol. They were not meeting in some rubble-strewn bunker in the midst of an all-out war; this was on their terms, in their domain.
Amit, however, did not consider that important. His armour was the same duty gear he had worn throughout the Kayvas conflict, the artificer-wrought superiority of it still visible, but layered with impact marks, blade scratches and other signifiers of battle-worn hardware. It mirrored the martial bluntness of the warrior who wore it.
‘Could you not have serviced your armour before arriving, brother?’ Nakir was asking.
Amit shrugged. His perpetual grimace peered through his sandy beard and close-cropped hair. ‘I came from the practice cages. Before that I was shooting orks off the hull of a frigate. I did not have the time.’ The last he said with sly relish.
‘You know what a polish cloth looks like, don’t you?’ Furio said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I could show you.’
The captain of the Fifth frowned and leaned in to look at Furio’s armour, feigning a look of confusion. ‘How strange…’ He pointed at the shining red ceramite cladding the other legionary. ‘For a moment there, your mail? I could have sworn the colours of it were purple and gold, not crimson.’
Nakir laughed. ‘As hard as he tries, Furio will never be as pretty as one of Fulgrim’s dandies.’
Furio snorted. ‘I agree that our primarch did not grant me the totality of his noble aspect, but he did reward me with the depth of his battle acumen.’ He looked up as Raldoron came closer. ‘And I am sure the First Captain will assert this truth with me; the plain fact is that the Blood Angels are the most handsome of the Legiones Astartes.’
‘Polished armour or not,’ added Amit, with a rare, brief smile.
‘I’m no judge of such things,’ Raldoron replied. ‘I’m just a simple soldier.’
Nakir cocked his head. ‘We are none of us simple soldiers, captain.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Raldoron allowed.
He turned to find Amit watching him. Of all the Legion captains, Amit’s reputation – and that of his company – was the most bloodthirsty. More than once, the Fifth had been called to censure for their zeal in pursuing enemy forces. It was not for nothing that the outspoken officer had earned the nickname ‘the Flesh Tearer’, and rather than deny the epithet, he had made it his own. The other officer had a predatory way about him, a sense of aggression barely held in check that Raldoron had seen unleashed in full many times on the field of battle. ‘Do you know?’ he said.
The First Captain did not need to ask what Amit meant. It was the question on all their minds. Where are we going next? Raldoron frowned. ‘I have not been told. That’s why we are here, so we may all learn that answer at once.’
‘The primarch is on his way,’ said Furio. ‘I saw Guard Sergeant Zuriel heading to his chambers to accompany him.’
‘If it was up to the Sanguinary Guard, the Angel would never be allowed to leave his quarters.’ Nakir snorted. ‘Azkaellon walks as if that gold armour of his makes him the better of the rest of us.’
Raldoron did not disagree with the sentiment, but it was not seemly to allow even the smallest seed of divisiveness to take root here. He gave Nakir a hard look. ‘Azkaellon, Zuriel and the others all have their duties to perform, just as we do. They deserve our respect.’
‘I say only what I see,’ Nakir replied, after a moment.
‘Not here,’ Raldoron told him. ‘Not today. We’ll have no cap-badge rivalry in our ranks.’
‘I have heard rumours about our new destination,’ Furio said, interceding to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. ‘It is said that the Warmaster is planning a major new offensive several sectors distant.’
‘And you know this how?’ asked Amit, doubt clear in his tone.
‘The astropathic choirs,’ explained Furio. ‘Their communications are sometimes imprecise. Other signals bleed in. Data on other expeditionary fleets becomes known.’
Raldoron said nothing. He too had heard the same hearsay, spoken by crewmen when they believed that he was out of earshot. Ships from several Legions, by some reports as many as six, were being called to Horus’s side – and with them, their primarchs. The First Captain tried to imagine what kind of enemy would require that scale of task force. Two or three of the Emperor’s sons fighting side by side was a rarity. More meant a threat of great scale in the offing.
He glanced at the representation of the planets beneath his feet. ‘Perhaps it is not a matter of war at all. Perhaps we are being gathered for a different reason. To follow the Emperor’s path back to Terra.’
‘We are not going to the Sol system, captain.’ A woman’s voice, pitched and clear like the ring of fine crystal, came to his ears. Raldoron turned and gave a small bow as the Red Tear’s shipmistress came towards them. Her retinue – a pair of Imperial Army officers and a female remembrancer carrying a small picter – walked warily behind her, trying not to appear cowed by the numbers of hulking figures surrounding them.
For her part, Admiral Athene DuCade appeared unconcerned by the warrior host in the chamber. She was tiny in comparison to Raldoron, but he had once heard a veteran describe her as ‘a maid cast out of iron’. Any legionary could have gathered her up in his arms and broken her in two like a bundle of dry twigs, but she radiated a majesty that the First Captain had only encountered on rare occasions. Nothing, from the largest enemy battle force to the most brutal engagement, seemed to faze the woman. Behind cool, blue eyes there was a tactician’s intellect that he found challenging. When Admiral DuCade spoke, even the Angel would listen – and that alone granted her a rare level of respect not often shown to those outside the Legion. Sanguinius had personally selected her to command his flagship, and she had done so as long as Raldoron had been a legionary.
He studied her lined, poised face. It was difficult for him to estimate her age; she seemed never to alter, decade after decade, kept timeless by juvenat treatments. Raldoron had no image of his birth-mother, growing up an orphan after his family had perished in a razor-storm, but he wondered if she would have looked like DuCade.
‘Thank you for joining us, admiral,’ said Nakir. ‘How goes the fleet?’
‘Well, captain,’ she replied. ‘We are at optimal fighting strength. The campaign’s casualties have been addressed. I think we all agree that we are ready to move on to the next deployment.’
‘And not so much as a thank you from the Alpha Legion,’ Furio said mildly. ‘It’s like they never needed us at all…’
&nbs
p; ‘If not Terra, then where?’ Amit broke in, unwilling to see the subject of the conversation drift. ‘Will we join the Ignis task force at Nartaba?’
The admiral glanced at the other Blood Angel. ‘No. It is my understanding that the mission against the eldar reavers in the Nartaba system is at an end. The battleship Ignis and her flotilla will come to us. A rendezvous point is already being prepared.’
‘And then?’ said Nakir.
DuCade gave a wan smile. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, captain. The primarch has not yet chosen to share his plans beyond that point with me.’ She was going to say more, but then one of the men at her side stiffened.
The admiral’s aide had an augmetic implant on the right side of his face that stretched from the temple down to the jaw line, a device of brass and polished silver. Raldoron recognised the form of a wireless vox-mechanism within it, and his enhanced hearing picked up a faint whine from the implant – the vibration of an echo-communiqué transmitted into the officer’s mastoid by bone induction.
‘Major?’ DuCade saw the reaction and gave her man a level look.
‘A contact, ma’am,’ said the aide, looking blankly into the middle distance as he repeated what he was hearing. ‘Our scout ships at the head of the fleet report a single Imperial vessel of cruiser tonnage on an intercept vector. It was likely waiting for us beyond the mass shadow of the belt, at the Mandeville point.’
‘Such poor timing…’ muttered Nakir.
‘What pennants?’ she demanded. ‘Name and squadron?’
‘Interrogation signals show it is the Dark Page, in service with the XVII Legion Astartes.’
Amit’s brow furrowed. ‘Lorgar’s Word Bearers? Who thought to invite them?’
Raldoron was already tapping the vox-bead in the neck-ring of his armour, switching to the intra-fleet communications frequency as the major spoke again.
‘We are now receiving a machine-call signal from the vessel. Code protocols concur.’
The First Captain listened in on the message and his expression grew grave. ‘They say they have come to speak to the Angel. They bring an emissary from the Warmaster.’
The Sanguinary Guard were waiting for Raldoron when he reached the primarch’s chambers. Zuriel, Guard Sergeant and second-in-command of the detachment, was giving orders to his battle-brother Lohgos.
‘You and Halkryn stand to sunward,’ he told the other Guardian. ‘Mendrion and I will cover the master at shadowline.’
Lohgos saluted with his fist to his chest, the gauntlet-mounted bolter affixed there clanking against his armour. He gave Raldoron a noncommittal glance and moved off.
Zuriel stepped into his path. ‘The matter is in hand, First Captain.’
‘No doubt,’ Raldoron replied. ‘But as Chapter Master, I should hear this Word Bearer’s utterances. I have a hundred battle captains who will need to know what the Warmaster’s orders are. Better they hear it from me.’
The Guard Sergeant nodded. ‘As you wish. The party from the Dark Page have docked in the secondary bay. They’ll be here shortly.’
The ornate doors of the primarch’s quarters opened and Raldoron stepped through, his eyes falling on Sanguinius before anything else.
His liege lord wore his duty armour, gold and white platinum with a bronze mail cloak that lay draped over his folded wings. It was not as ornate as the high artificer armour he would wear into combat, but still it seemed barely able to contain the full radiance of the primarch. Raldoron had once heard one of the remembrancers say that Sanguinius shone like a star carved into the shape of a man, and he could not fault that description.
The primarch saw the First Captain and nodded briefly, beckoning him. ‘Ral, good. You’ve saved me the trouble of summoning you.’ He crossed the chamber’s atrium, passing under the pools of soft light cast from floating lume-globes overhead. The glow spilled off his elaborate armour, illuminating paintings and other artworks arrayed across the walls with splashes of colour.
Raldoron and Zuriel dropped to one knee on the polished stone floor and bowed their heads. ‘Your will, my lord?’ said the captain.
The Angel gestured for them to stand, and as Zuriel and the other gold-armoured bodyguards took up their assigned positions, the captain came a few steps closer. Sanguinius was much taller than him, but he did not tower over the officer, not in a way that made him feel he was inferior. The Lord of the Blood Angels seemed able to stand on level ground with his sons, even though the reality was otherwise. ‘I dreamed of you, my friend,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Some nights ago, while I meditated on our crusade.’
‘I… am honoured,’ said Raldoron, meaning every word. The ways of the Emperor’s sons were complex and often far beyond the understanding of others – even men raised to transhuman power like those of the Legions – and it was known that some of them possessed abilities that appeared to defy logic. There were many stories: that Mortarion of the Death Guard was incapable of feeling pain, that Corax could cloud the minds of men with but a thought or that the Khan could talk to storms… These were a strange intertwining of living myth and cold truth, and when one was speaking of beings like the primarchs it was impossible to say where fact ended and fiction began. The Angel had the sight, so it was said, and nothing that Raldoron had ever seen or heard in his years as a legionary had ever made him doubt it. On rare occasions, at times of the greatest import, Sanguinius would intervene in the operations of the Legion, apparently without reason, but always with great effect. Lives would be saved, defeat avoided, traps found. And it was recorded that he would sometimes give a boon to a warrior – a glimpse of their own destiny revealed to him through the complex weave of fate.
As a young scout, Raldoron had heard this story from the old Master of Neophytes and wondered what such a thing would mean. Now, more than a century later, he was learning the answer.
Sanguinius nodded. ‘I saw you on Baal. You were in the caverns beneath the fortress-monastery. You were…’
For the briefest of instants, the primarch’s face clouded, but then the moment was gone and Raldoron wondered if he had imagined it. ‘You were filled with pride.’
The captain was at a loss for the right words. Finally, he found an answer. ‘I have always been proud to be a son of Sanguinius, lord.’
‘And I am pleased to count you among my Legion.’ The primarch gave him an easy grin. ‘You are my strong right arm, Ral.’
‘They come!’ Zuriel called out, forestalling any more conversation.
In the middle of the antechamber, a square of flagstones dropped into a recess and then came apart, each retracting away into the floor space below like the pieces of a tessellate puzzle. From the open shaft revealed beneath a platform rose up, floating on a heat-haze ripple of anti-grav force. The elevator drew level with the deck and halted; standing upon it were four Blood Angels wearing the gold heraldry of the Sanguinary Guard, at parade-ground attention with their bolters held at arms. As one, they went to their knees and repeated the same bow Raldoron had given moments before.
Three figures stood in the centre of the platform, and they too gave Sanguinius his due deference. Two of them were Space Marines, in dark armour heavily detailed with lines of text carved into the ceramite sheath, the sigil of a burning book upon their pauldrons. The Word Bearers went unhooded, and they bowed low from the waist. Both men had lengthy dreadlocks that tumbled down over their gorgets, the hair ringed with devotional clasps and twists of gold wire.
The last of the new arrivals was an unnaturally tall female clad from head to foot in robes of a strange, sheer material the colour of gunmetal. Raldoron’s first thought was that she might have been a descendant from one of the null-gee colonies where humans grew willowy and weak of bone in the microgravity; but such beings would be confined to support frames on board any ship with a Terran-normal environment. The sketch of her face was visible through the dark muslin-like cloth, as were the curves of her spindly body, her bony shoulders and small breasts. Raldoron raised
an eyebrow as he realised that beneath the shapeless robes she wore nothing else.
One of the Word Bearers, a white-haired veteran wearing a banner of parchment over his arm like a half-cloak, took a step forwards. ‘Honoured Sanguinius,’ he began, his voice rough. ‘I am Chaplain Tanus Kreed, ranked Acolyte of Lorgar and commander of the Dark Page.’ He gestured to the warrior at his side. ‘My second, Captain Uan Harox.’
Harox bobbed his head. The captain’s armour also sported long strips of oath-paper falling from bright scarlet seals on his chest plate. His hair was rust-red and Raldoron saw that he had no organic eyes; instead a single mechanical vision slit had been surgically mounted in his skull.
‘The woman is Mamzel Corocoro Sahzë of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.’
‘An astropath?’ said Sanguinius.
She performed a complex, balletic curtsey. ‘Glory to you and your Legion, Great Angel.’ Her voice had a peculiar, musical quality to it.
‘I welcome my brother’s cohorts to the Red Tear,’ said the primarch, dismissing the honour guards with a glance. ‘But I must say, you were not expected. A day later and you would have found us gone. My fleet is in the midst of preparing for travel into the warp.’
‘Fortune, then,’ said Kreed, stepping off the elevator platform with Harox and Sahzë trailing behind him. ‘The Warmaster dispatched us at the most opportune moment.’
‘Horus does have a good sense of timing, that’s always been so,’ Sanguinius allowed, sharing a look with Raldoron. ‘But I find it interesting that you are here within a heartbeat of our campaign ending at Kayvas. I wonder if Alpharius has been as quiet as he appears.’
Kreed cocked his head. ‘I know nothing of that, my lord. I was ceded to the Warmaster’s command by Lord Aurelian and I am here on his order.’
‘Horus has sent me a Chaplain?’ The Angel considered the thought. ‘What do you make of that, First Captain?’
‘With respect to our guests, the Blood Angels have no need of one,’ Raldoron said immediately. The acolytes of the Word Bearers had been sent to many fleets, placed in several of the Legions in the months that unfolded after the passing of the Nikaea edict. The suspension of psychic warfare and the abolition of the Librarius contingent had been dealt with differently in each Legion that maintained one, each according to their individual traditions and methods. In a service offered by Lorgar to his brethren, the master of the XVII Legion had sent his most pious and vigilant apostles to help with the re-integration of those gifted with psyker powers back into the rank and file of the Space Marine cohorts.
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