Warhammer 40,000 - Anthology 13

by The Book of Blood (Christian Dunn)

  In full battle armour, resplendent in blood red on his right and deathly black on his left, Chaplain Tenjin pulled his Death Mask over his head, grabbed his flamer and melta-gun, securing his ancient power fist to the holster on his leg. The Rosarius glowed righteously, suspended over his primary heart on a chain of some long forgotten metal. On his back, his jump pack hummed quietly, waiting impatiently to burst into life on his command.

  The chaplain flicked a krak grenade at the locked doors of his chamber. It detonated on impact, blasting the door violently out into the corridor. Tenjin stepped through the residual flames, emerging into the passageway beyond like a phantom of death itself. Two of his guards had been killed instantly, squashed into pulp by the sudden impact of the heavy adamantium. The others just stared at the chaplain looming over them in terrible clarity, flames licking at his armour, purple eyes piercing their souls from the depths of his Death Mask. The guards, dazed from the concussion and terror, turned and ran, vanishing into the maze of corridors - Tenjin let them go, not caring about the alarms that they would raise.

  The route to the Temple of the high priest took Tenjin through the holding cells around the Apothecarion, the secured encampment of Death Company initiates while they waited to join their cursed battle brothers on campaigns off-world. The chaplain blew the doors without a moment’s hesitation, detonating a melta-bomb against the blast shields. Once inside, Tenjin was unsurprised to see the remnants of his scout squad, bedecked in the black armour of the Death Company. A chaplain knelt before them, chanting a litany of tranquillity, keeping them in control of themselves until they would be needed in battle. Without pausing for breath, Tenjin fired off a pulse of melta, instantly rendering the head of the shocked chaplain into a pool of molten flesh and bone.

  ‘You six with me!’ he demanded with a whispered authority that the novice Death Company could not resist. ‘There is blood to be split. For the Emperor and Sanguinius!’

  ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius!’ rejoined the Death Company as they chased out of the chamber, hot on the heels of the veteran chaplain, eager to please the awesome figure and desperate for battle.

  The corridors were alive with guardsmen, digging themselves into junctions and blind corners. But they were no match for the rampage of the Death Company, which scythed through them, leaving a wake of blood and screams.

  By the time Tenjin reached the Temple, Ansatsu’s honour guard were arrayed before it. His standard bearer stood forward of the group, raising the banner of the Angels Sanguine for the charging Death Company to see. ‘In the name of Sanguinius and his rightful Chosen, cease this treachery!’

  The Death Company slowed, their already confused minds tugged in two different directions at once as the symbolism of their own standard yanked at their thoughts. But Tenjin was ready for this and was immediately at the front of the charge, his Rosarius blazing with life and his Death Mask filling his squad with awe. He fired his flamer as he ran, letting the flames plume out before him, obliterating the image of the Standard Bearer. This was enough, and the Death Company ploughed on through the flames to engage the honour guard - stoked with their own powerful sense of righteousness. By the time they caught sight of the standard again, it was too late, the two forces were already locked in combat and the formidable momentum of the Rage had obliterated their ability to reason.

  Tenjin himself was in the air above the battle, the jets of his jump pack roaring with life as he cursed the cowardice of Ansatsu, hidden behind his honour guard in the sanctuary of his great temple. The chaplain blazed a fiery path through the night sky, heading for the roof of the temple, which bristled with the ugly, gothic magnificence of gargoyles and jagged turrets.

  Another krak grenade and the roof was open - a gap large enough for a Space Marine yawned into the darkness below, and Tenjin was through it before the rain of masonry had even fallen to the ground. Casting his Death Mask aside, he left the battle raging outside, searching for his prize in the shadowy interior. He gunned the engine of his jump pack. The burners roared, ripping the heavily shadowed air into strips of flame …

  ‘I think that I know the story from here,’ said Inquisitor Addiss, leaning back from the Tablet of Lestrallio and clicking a switch to release the adamantium bonds that shackled Tenjin. As the inquisitor shifted, Tenjin caught a glimpse of the strange Deathwatch librarian behind him.

  Tenjin looked confused, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ground as he struggled to sit up. His injuries were severe and even this slight movement racked him with pain. Without his armour, he felt weak and exposed. ‘Then, you believe me, inquisitor?’ The chaplain was suspicious and incredulous.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether you are right. It doesn’t even matter whether I believe you. What matters is that you believe yourself, and that I believe that.’

  ‘Does the Inquisition not care what I have done?’

  ‘The Inquisition is more interested in why you have done it, brother chaplain. Your purity and honour are our concerns - your actions are your own. As I said, only the Emperor can judge those.’

  ‘I have been true to myself,’ insisted Tenjin, reassuring himself and the inquisitor all at once.

  The inquisitor and the librarian exchanged glances. ‘Yes, that is clear to me now. What may not be clear to you is that you have also done a service to the Inquisition.’

  Tenjin tilted his head and looked quizzically at the inquisitor. ‘No, that is not clear to me. My service was to the Emperor and Sanguinius.’

  ‘Indeed. But it is also the case that I have been surveying the behaviour of your former high priest for some time. I was suspicious of his affection for the mutant tribesmen of Baalus Trine, suspicious enough to enlist the aid of Ashok as he returned from his term of service with the Deathwatch.’

  Tenjin’s eyes fell on the shadowy figure behind the inquisitor - the same one who had stood at the shoulder of Ansatsu three months before. He was the same Marine who had stood beside the inquisitor outside the temple, when Tenjin had finally been brought to the ground. And Tenjin was sure that he had him before - long ago. What role did this librarian serve?

  ‘Ansatsu trusted Ashok, evidently believing that the Thirst of the Death Company could not really be mastered, and suspecting that he had been tainted by his years of exposure to the forces of Chaos in the Deathwatch - our librarian did not seek to disillusion him. Ashok reported on the “tastes” of the high priest - the blood rites in which he participated, drinking the blood of the Baalite cultists and their mutant victims. For the Inquisition this demonstrated that he was tainted already, perhaps a legacy of his years as a tribesman himself. For Ashok, however, a librarian of the Angels Sanguine, the fear was that this blood drinking would transform Ansatsu into a devoted follower of Khorne, as his omophagae organ internalised the cravings of the cultists whose blood he consumed. Ashok told me that Ansatsu’s thoughts betrayed a plan to transform the Angels Sanguine, but he could discern no details. For a long time he suspected that you were part of that plan.

  ‘The Inquisition was also not ignorant of the increasing Thirst of the neophytes and the younger Marines,’ continued Addiss, ‘and I was suspicious that this was some part of Ansatsu’s plan, but we could not work out how Ansatsu might control this. Your explanation of the function of the Grail of Angels is compelling in this regard.’

  Tenjin was wide-eyed. ‘When did you know that I was not part of this?’

  ‘Not until now. Ashok began to doubt your complicity when Ansatsu removed you from the Death Company, letting it rampage uncontrollably around the frontier, shedding immeasurable oceans of blood in which the high priest seemed to delight. But the actions of the scout squad under your command made him suspicious again - perhaps you were the agent of their corruption? However, Ansatsu was shocked and delighted by the slaughter those scouts unleashed. His plan was beginning to take shape. Now, it seems to us, he had the perfect excuse to remove you from the scene - his veteran chaplain, the most experienced Angel
in the arts of controlling exactly what he wanted to release.

  ‘Your bloody confrontation with the high priest was ambiguous for us. It was possible that it was the result of your own flaws, that you had succumbed to the Thirst and that you were lashing out against your own battle bothers. There was Rage in your eyes when we found you outside the temple, and we could not take any chances.’

  ‘Hence the Tablet of Lestrallio.’

  ‘Exactly so. We had to be sure that you had acted out of honour and faith in the Emperor and Sanguinius, not out of a blind thirst for blood. It doesn’t matter whether your theory about the Grail of Angels is correct - Ansatsu was corrupt and your motives were pure …’

  The inquisitor trailed off, distracted by the movements of Ashok behind him. The librarian had dropped to his knees, sweeping his cloak into a whirl as he bowed his head and gripped his fist to his chest.

  Tenjin had also seen the flamboyant deference of the veteran librarian, and understanding began to seep into his mind as though carried in his blood. He swung his legs over the side of the tablet and pushed himself painfully to his feet - the imperatives of dignity.

  Addiss shifted his eyes from Tenjin to Ashok, his incomprehension gradually turning to suspicion as he saw the eyes of the two Angels Sanguine fix on each other, sharing an unspoken understanding. The inquisitor narrowed his eyes and calculated silently, sandwiched into this moment of recognition without sharing it. He had never trusted librarians, with their Psychic Hoods and Force Staffs. They reeked of Warp-taint. He could taste them in the air, and they made him nauseous.

  And then there were the Angels Sanguine: Addiss had been within an eldar’s blade width of requesting a Sisters of Battle retinue for his visit to Baalus Trine. How mutated did they have to be before they became heretics - living offences to their armour and their gene-seed? He had only changed his mind when he realised that such a request would have handed authority over to the Ecclesiarchy on a platter. Emperor knows that there is no love lost between the Ecclesiarchy and the chaplains of the Blood Angels. Addiss was not about to let go of this case.

  Clarity began to filter through his confusion, and Addiss began to understand the impromptu ceremony being enacted around him. The pieces were falling into place. With Ansatsu gone, the veteran chaplain Tenjin had become the most senior figure in the Angels Sanguine - he would automatically accede to the position of high priest.

  He watched the chaplain and the librarian as their eyes flashed in concentration, and he wondered what they would do now. How would they render these events into silence? How could they explain the loss of so many of their Chapter, including their high priest - especially with their numbers so low already? Would the Ordo Hereticus be interested in these explanations?

  An unwelcome thought forced its way into Addiss’ mind, pushing his pontifications aside and stamping its presence into his consciousness.

  This is how we guarantee silence.

  The inquisitor jolted out of his reverie and turned on his heel. The face of the librarian was deathly white and his eyes burned with a blinding red, piercing Addiss’ soul and holding his body immobile.

  You will tell no one of this, brother inquisitor.

  Addiss could feel his oesophagus contracting, squeezing his breath out into the cold air of the Apothecarion. He opened his mouth to protest, to demand that Ashok release him, to force him to remember the battles they fought together over the last decades, but no words came out. He grasped at his throat in a futile attempt to tear away the invisible hands that strangled him.

  Struggling against the librarian’s restraints, Addiss turned to the face of Tenjin, letting his eyes reach out for some mercy from the new high priest. He found nothing but blood in those eyes, and he watched in horror as Tenjin performed a crisp cutting signal with his hand.

  ‘For Sanguinius and the Emperor,’ said Tenjin with clinical calm.

  Ashok’s eyes flared even brighter and Addiss spun involuntarily to face him, his feet hardly touching the floor. He tried to look away, but Ashok held his gaze immovably.

  The thoughts seemed to form somewhere down near his stomach, swelling and pushing their way up through his abdomen. For Sanguinius and the Emperor, death comes for you. The words bubbled through his blood, rushing through his jugular, flooding his brain with fatal certainty. Death comes for you. Death comes. It is here.

  At the very end of his life, Addiss saw the world in glorious red-shift, a spectrum of crimsons, scarlets, and rubies. The capillaries in his eyes ruptured in their thousands as the blood in his head quested for a vent - creating new escape routes for the building pressure.

  As the inquisitor lay dead, blood oozing freely from his eyes into a slow flood around his prone body, Tenjin nodded his approval to Ashok. ‘For Sanguinius,’ they said together.

  ‘Take the Second Company and deal with the remnants of his retinue,’ said Tenjin with calm certainty, ‘none must be allowed to leave this place.’

  Ashok nodded his assent. Sliding his hood over his head, the Angels Sanguine librarian swept out of the Apothecarion, his Force Staff crackling in his hand.

  HEART OF RAGE

  James Swallow

  In the blood-warm gloom, amid the shrouding, cloying thickness of the air, the heart beat on. A clock ticking towards death, a ceaseless rhythm echoing through his body. A cadence that inched him, pulse by throbbing pulse, towards the raging madness of the Thirst.

  Engorged with vital fluid, the heart pressed against the inside of his ribcage, trip-hammer impacts growing faster and faster, reaching out, threatening to engulf him. His every sense rang with the force of it, the rushing in his ears, his arrow-sharp sight fogged and hazy, the scent of old rust thick in his nostrils… And the taste.

  Oh yes, the taste… Congealing upon his tongue, the heavy meat-tang like burned copper, the wash across his fangs. The aching, delirious need to drink deep.

  Clouds of ruby and darkness billowed about him, surrounded him, dragged him roaring into the void, damned and destined to surrender to it. These were the enemies that he and all his kindred could never defeat, the unslakable Red Thirst and its terrible twin, the berserker fury of the Black Rage. These were the legacy of The Flaw, the foes he would face for eternity, beyond all others, for they were trapped within him. Woven like threads of poison through the tapestry of his DNA, the bane-gift of his lord and master ten thousand years dead.

  Sanguinius. Primarch and noblest among the Emperor’s sons. The Great Angel, the Brightest One. The Shockwave of the master’s murder, millennia gone yet forever resonant, thundered in his veins. The power of the primarch’s angelic splendour and matchless strength filled him… And yet the other face of that golden coin was dark, dark as rage, dark as fury, darker than any hell-spawned curse upon creation.

  Their boon and their blight. The malevolent mirror of the beast inside every brother of the Blood Angels Chapter.

  Brother-Codicier Garas Nord knelt upon the chapel’s flagstones, the only sound about him the whisper of servo-skulls high overhead, watching the lone Space Marine with indifferent attention.

  Hunched forwards in prayer, his broad frame was alone before the simple iron altar. Wan light cast by biolumes cast hollow colour over his face. It glittered across the sullen indigo of his battle armour and the gold chasing of the metal skull upon his chest. The glow caught the deep, rich red of his right shoulder pauldron and the sigil of his Chapter, a winged drop of crimson blood. It glittered upon the matrix of fine crystal about his bowed head, where the frame of a psychic hood rose from his gorget—and it caught in accusing shadows the faint trembling of Nord’s gauntleted hands, where they met and crossed in the shape of the Imperial aquila.

  Nord’s eyes were closed, but his senses were open. His hands tightened into fists. The ominous echoes of the dream still clung to him, defeating his every attempt to banish them.

  He released a sigh. Visions were no stranger to him. They were as much a tool to his kind as the hood or the forc
e axe sheathed upon his back. Nord had The Sight, the twisted blessing of psionic power, and with it he fought alongside his brothers in the Adeptus Astartes, to bolster them upon the field of conflict. In his time he had seen many things, great horrors spilling into the world from the mad realms of the warp, forms that pulled at reason with their sheer monstrosity. Darkness and hate… And once in a while, a glimpse of something. A possibility. A future.

  It had saved his life on Ixion, when prescience turned his head, a split second before a las-bolt cut through the air. He still wore the burn scar from that near-hit across his cheek, livid against his face.

  But this was different. No flash of reflex, just a dream, over and over. He could not help but wonder—was it also a warning?

  His kind… They had many names—telekine, witchkin, warp-touched, psyker—but beyond it all he was something more. A Son of Sanguinius. A Blood Angel. Whatever visions of fate his mind conjured for him, his duty came before them all.

  If the spirit of Sanguinius were to beckon him towards a death, then he prayed that it would be a noble sacrifice; an ending not in the wild madness of the Black Rage, but one forged in honour. A death worthy of his primarch, worthy of one who had perished protecting Holy Terra and the Emperor himself from the blades of arch-traitors.

  “Nord.” He sensed the new presence in the chapel, the edges of a hard, disciplined psyche, a thing forged like sword-blade steel.

  The Codicier opened his eyes and looked up at the statue of the Emperor behind the altar. The Emperor looked down, impassive and silent. The eyes of the carving seemed to track Nord as he bowed before it. It offered only mute counsel, but that was just and right. For now, whatever troubled the Codicier was his burden to carry.