Fear to Tread

by James Swallow

  ‘We open the path together, but only one can take this journey,’ said Novenus.

  ‘I will go,’ Kano told them. Carefully, he reached out and placed his hand upon the chest plate of the Angel’s armour. ‘I will bring him back.’

  ‘And so we do this?’ Salvator demanded, eyes widening. ‘We break oath and no brother here questions it?’

  Kano shot him a look. ‘What could be said, brother? Each of us knows full well the import of what we are about to do. There is no room for doubt.’ He paused. ‘Fraternitas. Legio. Pater. Imperator. That is the order of our loyalty, and it will always be so. If I live beyond this day, I will gladly face the Emperor’s judgment on what I do now.’

  A ninth figure entered the chamber, standing across the threshold to block any attempt to leave. ‘We will all face it.’ Azkaellon’s golden armour glittered like the blade of the bared glaive encarmine in his mailed fist. The point of the sword clanged against the deck. ‘You will do this,’ said the Guard Commander, ‘and I will watch you. Know that any sign of actions untoward… of witchery… will see your head taken from your neck.’

  Kano closed his eyes. ‘We begin,’ he said.

  Meros glanced over his shoulder at Captain Raldoron as they picked their way along the twisted corridor. ‘She will not agree,’ he told him. ‘She is not a soldier. She cultivates plants.’

  ‘We are all at war now,’ came the reply. ‘You saved her life on the agri-world. She trusts you. Convince her.’

  ‘I fear that coin has been spent,’ he admitted. ‘When last we spoke, I terrified her.’

  The heavy footfalls of their power armour echoed off the Red Tear’s damaged walls, and the broken deck plates shifted alarmingly. The lower tiers of the massive battle-barge were a warren of compacted wreckage and debris. Precious few compartments were still whole and with power.

  ‘Then terrify her into compliance,’ Raldoron replied. ‘Believe me, if I could drug this civilian into docility and carry her in a gun-case, I would.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Meros said, almost to himself. They had arrived at the sanctuary, and both of the Blood Angels bowed low to step in under the slumped archway of the cargo hatch. The single battle-brother standing sentinel threw them a nod, but said nothing.

  The space beyond had been a long, wide tankage for water when the Red Tear was operational, but now it was an atrium of curved walls and suspended baffle plates, the only indicators to its former contents the patches of rust on the walls.

  Humans filled the compartment. Many of them were injured; almost all of them were crew-serfs or indentured servants in drab ship-suits and the crimson-flashed uniforms of the Legion auxiliary. A handful, who stood out like withered tropical flowers amid parched grasses, were what was left of the fleet’s remembrancer contingent. Meros glanced at them; in the turmoil he had forgotten about the artists and the scribes, and he felt a pang of sympathy as their petrified faces turned toward him. He pitied them. They had no comprehension of the world they had been thrown into.

  The remembrancers shied away when he came close. Meros’s gaze raked over the men and women lying under rough blankets or huddling together for safety. And there he found Halerdyce Gerwyn, his face pale and his breathing thready, staring up at the bulkhead above. Meros moved to speak to him, then thought better of it. There was little he could do for the sequentialist.

  ‘What is that?’ He turned to see Raldoron addressing a group of people who sat in a circle around a heating pod. One of them – the man Dortmund – had a small book in his hand, a crudely-printed thing of red ink on translucent paper.

  Dortmund had been reading aloud when they entered, and now he held the tome to his chest as if it would protect him. ‘It is a collection of stories,’ piped the youth. ‘Words of courage and faith. Meant to inspire in times of hardship.’

  Raldoron’s lips thinned. ‘That won’t be enough,’ he said, and they moved on.

  The humans could not hide their fear, as much as some of them tried. Meros could literally smell it on them, his enhanced senses picking out the chemical scent-triggers in their bodily odours. He tried to imagine this moment from their viewpoint, but it was hard to frame his thoughts in so limited a fashion. Meros had the benefit of being set to his task of battle, without pause to ruminate on what greater meaning events might have. On a deeper level, he was aware that the circumstances of the Signus Cluster mission would have far-reaching consequences not just for the fleet, or his Legion, but for the Imperium in totality. If he halted, allowed these questions to rise to the fore, then perhaps he too would know something of the dread these people were experiencing.

  But he could not dwell on thoughts of sedition, of brothers turning against brothers. He had to fight the battle in front of him. And then the next. And the next.

  They found the Niobe woman with a few of the other survivors from the Stark Dagger. She flinched when she saw the Blood Angels and shrank back.

  Meros raised his hand. ‘Tillyan. I am sorry. Before, in the corridor… I forgot myself.’

  She nodded warily. ‘It’s all right. I understand.’ That seemed like a truth. ‘You could not know. This was all new to you.’

  ‘You didn’t see what happened when the daemons came,’ offered Zhomas bleakly. ‘We too thought we could fight. At first.’

  Meros saw the perpetual sneer of the one called Hengist as he approached them warily. ‘No surprise,’ spat the criminal. ‘Even the great Legiones Astartes can’t beat these hellspawn!’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said Raldoron, silencing him.

  Meros’s brow creased. He wasn’t used to dealing with civilians, with the ordinary ranks of humanity. They had social codes and ways of conduct that he did not understand – and this was a moment of import. He sighed. ‘Niobe, your gift…’

  Her expression altered in an instant, becoming guarded. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You do,’ he corrected. ‘It doesn’t matter how you were able to conceal yourself from the black ship tithe for so long, that is not important.’

  Zhomas caught the words black ship and physically recoiled from Niobe’s side. ‘You… You’re a psyker?’

  ‘I knew it!’ Hengist released a shout. ‘I knew there was something wrong about her. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I?’

  Raldoron aimed a finger at the man, and after that no one else dared to offer an opinion.

  ‘I’m not a witch-mind,’ Niobe said, in a small voice. ‘I don’t know what this pariah word means.’

  ‘It means we need you,’ Meros told her. ‘You have a rare ability. It’s how you survived, how you managed to escape. How it was the succubae did not see us.’

  ‘No.’ She was shaking her head.

  ‘We are going to lose this war.’ Meros said it aloud and heard a ripple of panic spread across the chamber. The blunt truth felt oddly liberating. ‘Unless we can kill the thing that started it. You will help us do that.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not offering you a choice, Tillyan. None of us have a choice.’

  It seemed like an age had passed before she gave a shuddering nod. ‘I’ll come, if you keep me safe.’

  ‘I will try.’ He offered her his hand, and she reached for it. Her slender fingers were barely long enough to wrap around his palm.

  Meros shared a glance with Raldoron as they moved back across the silent chamber with the woman at their side. The other survivors stared at Niobe with expressions of shock, fear and disgust; he wondered if they understood that by taking her, he had removed the only thing protecting them from the predations of the daemons. Every mortal in the sanctuary would be prey to the madness now.

  ‘This way,’ he said, leading Niobe away. Raldoron remained a moment, speaking quietly to the legionary on guard.

  Helik Redknife was not a stranger to the feral beast that lurked in men’s souls. He had seen it in himself too often, knowing that such a thing was real and had great power. Many believed that the Wolves of Russ were nothing but that
force, wild and undisciplined, but those who thought so did not know the sons of Fenris. To recognise that bestial self and fight war with it, to shackle it to the needs of the great murder-make, required a degree of control no mere barbarian could ever manage.

  Until this day he had not witnessed the sight of that feral power let slip in any other Legion but his own, but it was here, all around him, in the eyes of every Blood Angel he came across.

  At his side, Brother Valdin held his bolter close, absently fingering the charms dangling from its fore-grip. ‘Still nothing over the vox,’ he reported.

  Redknife nodded, glancing at the Rune Priest walking ahead of them. Stiel was bent low, tracing his fingers through the dry dirt at his feet. The war-fog around the Space Wolves had a peculiar stink to it that clogged the nostrils of the legionaries and the mist seemed to deaden the air as well, making sounds waver. It was becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of what was going on in this hellish landscape.

  The noise of war was all around them, the crashing of guns and the bloody ruin-sound of bodies opening to the sky; but the captain could not tell if he heard the defeat or the victory of the Blood Angels. Those sons of the Angel they had encountered since the disorder began paid them no heed. To a man, the warriors of the IX Legion seemed interested only in bloodletting and violence.

  Stiel had put words to it. ‘The fall of their primarch has released a red ghost upon them. I taste nothing but rage in the air.’

  Redknife gave a solemn nod. He could understand. If Russ were laid low by the blade of an enemy, would the Space Wolves react any differently? But it sat wrongly with him. All Helik knew of the Blood Angels was of a Legion that bore little resemblance to this. They fought now with a ferocity that would give even a Blood Claw pause.

  ‘Over there.’ Valdin pointed, and Redknife saw a large group of figures in crimson armour gathered in a wide defile. He moved toward the formation, even as the Rune Priest broke into a sprint.

  ‘No,’ Stiel called out a warning. ‘Keep back. They are not–’

  His words came too late. Some of the Blood Angels had seen them, and they were turning, gathering to face the Space Wolves. Redknife counted at least three times the number of his squad, and he felt the weight of threat hanging in the air.

  Wet blades glistened in the hands of the other legionaries. These were no common combat knifes, but custom weapons crested with barbs, more akin to the flaying blades of a butcher. The Wolf Captain halted, his hand on his sword, waiting. He did not need to look towards his skald to know what would come next.

  Some of the Blood Angels were crouched, and as they came to their feet, Redknife saw they had been bent over the bodies of the dead; the last of the insane zealots sent by the beast-creatures to bog down the assault force.

  The warriors had removed their helmets, and their faces were smeared with crimson, great tides of it that had cascaded down their chins and across their armour. The Space Wolf’s teeth bared in shock and the Blood Angels did the same, fangs wet with glistening red.

  The odour of torn flesh came across them and Redknife found his voice. ‘What is this?’ he demanded.

  A legionary in war-damaged armour, a malevolent cast to his bearded, scarred face, came forward. He carried a flaying knife in his hand, and a trickle of blood from its tip painted a line across the dust behind him.

  Amit. The Wolf Captain knew the warrior’s name. He searched the Blood Angel’s eyes for any kind of recognition and did not find it.

  ‘You take the blood of the enemy?’ said Redknife. ‘That’s not your way.’

  ‘You don’t know us.’ Amit’s reply was a low, feral growl. ‘What are you?’

  ‘We are kinsmen…’ Valdin offered, stiffening.

  Amit glowered at them, panting like an animal. ‘Lies.’ A shadow fell over his gaze. ‘We are betrayed. You have always been against us. You all betrayed us!’

  ‘No.’ Redknife raised his hand, sensing the moment slipping away from him. ‘Listen to me, cousin. Look past your fury.’ But even as the words left his lips, he knew it was too late. In Amit’s gaze, Redknife saw a bleak, furious cast that he had known only once before – when he had the ill-fate to cross paths with the warriors of the Wulfen. There was nothing he could reach for – no reason, no sanity, only pure inchoate rage.

  ‘Death to traitors!’ bellowed Amit, exploding forwards with his blade singing through the air.

  Redknife felt a wash of hot crimson spatter across his face as the Blood Angels captain cut Valdin’s throat with his first blow, his warriors boiling over the broken landscape in a murderous frenzy.

  The Space Wolf drew his sword and cursed the fate that had brought him to this moment, cursed the creatures that had set this madness in motion, cursed Warmaster Horus for daring to pit brother against brother. But more than that, he cursed the fact that it had been right to send him here.

  He lost sight of Stiel in the thrashing clash of blades and gunfire, as the Blood Angels of Amit’s company fell upon the Space Wolves with a wrath that was as fathomless as it was unstoppable.

  And so we die here, he thought bitterly, as legionaries he would call kin overwhelmed him with ferocity borne of madness, and the Allfather’s great dream dies with us.

  The Stormbird flashed over the battlefield, fast and high, describing a ballistic arc toward the enemy stronghold.

  At the aft drop-ramp, Raldoron stood grasping a stanchion, his other hand pressed to the armourglass of a square window in the hatch. Grimly, he watched the abnormal clouds over the war zone swirl and drift against each other, parting now and then to reveal glimpses of the cratered, blood-smeared earth below.

  Sparks of light that could only be muzzle flashes underlit the haze in strobes of white, but there was no coherence to them. The First Captain’s tactical skills enabled him to read any conflict like a map, swiftly picking out lines of attacker and defender, patterns of force and counter-force. He did not see that here, however.

  There was only a wavering procession of red, broken in places, thickening into a mass in others. The army of the IX Legion, moving inexorably across the Plains of the Damned, drawn closer by the passing of the hours to the foot of the great affront that was the bone temple.

  This was what they had been reduced to, then. The Blood Angels, once proud and vigilant, now remade, as undisciplined as wildfire. The best and the brightest of the Legiones Astartes had become less an army, more a mob baying for the blood of those who had wounded their father.

  And the worst of it was, Raldoron empathised. Some fraction of him wanted to be down there with them, to lose himself in the scarlet hell of frenzy. There was a purity in it, he reflected, a kind of clear truth to the want for battle, battle and nothing more.

  This has always been part of us, he thought. The Angel knew it. Now it is unmasked and threatens to engulf every one of his sons.

  He looked away, his gaze finding the woman Niobe. She sat in an acceleration couch, bundled with straps into a seat built for a Space Marine, too big for a human of her slight frame. She was lost inside a vest of Imperial Army flak armour, far too large for her. Someone had given her a laspistol and she held the holstered gun, belt, strap and all, in her lap as though she did not know what to do with it.

  Raldoron’s lips thinned. He had already decided it was best not to think of her as a living being at all, but as a piece of hardware. A fragile device to be protected. A tool. The captain did not expect her to survive once they made touchdown. He only hoped it would be long enough to gain them entry into the Cathedral of the Mark. After that, he considered that the lives of every member of his strike team would be measured in minutes, at best.

  Raldoron wondered at the immeasurable talent Niobe possessed. It could not be seen, or heard or touched, but he couldn’t deny that he felt it. Just being in close proximity to the woman, he sensed the strange dead-air texture that Meros had spoken of. But most noticeable was the way she calmed him, calmed all of them. He glanced over at the
Apothecary, saw Meros with Sergeant Orexis, Cador, Racine and the others. All of them, they were set to their tasks, preparing for the fight ahead.

  They were not distracted, not chafing at every tiny little annoyance. They did not think a slight hid in every word or deed. He and his legionaries did not knead the grips of their weapons and look upon the war below as if they were hungry for it. Raldoron frowned. It shamed him to admit that he too had been touched by the shock that had laid down the Angel. If they could not find the heart of this assault upon their will, as Kano had predicted, he dreaded to think where the path to fury might take them.

  A black shape blurred past the window, to the aft of the Stormbird, and Raldoron’s head snapped up, his musings immediately forgotten.

  Out there a flock of furies – winged patchwork things, humanoids of livid-red flesh with clawed hands and barbed black wings – wheeled and turned in the wake of the aircraft. The creatures acted strangely, for long moments howling and clawing at one another as if they were in distress, annoyed beyond measure at the mere presence of the Blood Angels aircraft.

  Then they attacked.

  Their hideous gargoyle faces crowded the window as dozens of them swarmed over the fast-moving Stormbird, talons biting into the fuselage as they clawed at the hull and pulled at the stabiliser flaps. The aircraft bucked and dropped sharply. Raldoron saw a cluster of the beasts ground into bloody gobbets as they forced themselves into the intakes of the drop-ship’s engines, clogging the turbines within.

  He snatched up his bolter and kicked at the hatch release switch, swinging the drop-ramp open even though they were thousands of metres above the ground. Tainted air screamed into the troop bay and Raldoron opened fire, picking off the creatures that flitted through his narrow field of vision across the Stormbird’s tail. A group of furies tried to gain entry through the yawning hatch, but the First Captain cut them down with a concentrated burst of bolt rounds, blowing them into the blood-misted slipstream.