The summit of the Vigilance tower was flat and featureless, as though the blade of a colossus had sheared off a higher peak. Crowe grasped its edge and lifted himself up into the shadows.
Night had fallen, but the city was lit by the fury of the bombardment. Inside the sword’s storm, the dark was total. Whirling clouds buffeted Crowe. They tried to pick him up and throw him from the tower. They howled and shrieked. They screamed. But not in his ears. The murderous cacophony was in his head. The shadows were the will of Antwyr made manifest. This was not the whispered insinuations or shouted commands. This was not malevolence directed at Crowe. This was the pure darkness of a will so powerful it tore its way into material existence. The clouds slammed against him. They coiled and constricted. They were chains one moment, a lash the next. They were physical and mental attacks, demanding his obedience, but without direction or purpose, inchoate, as if they were but the radiation of the true evil.
Crowe could see nothing in the darkness. There were brief moments when the clouds lifted and he caught glimpses of the surface of the tower, but he saw only a few feet in each direction. He could sense a consistence and a gravity to the storm, though. It had an eye. He walked towards it, his strides steady and careful on the rough surface beneath his feet. He sword was drawn. The holy light of its blade shone brighter as he moved closer to the centre of the vortex. The dark will shrieked, grasping at him, eager to haul him to its source.
Crowe gave the dark what it wished. He gave it too much. He marched in the faith of the Emperor. He marched in an abhorrence of all that was daemonic. He marched as a Knight of the Flame of the Grey Knights. His presence burned the dark.
The current reversed. The darkness began to tear. Crowe could see the ground again. He walked faster. The shadows smouldered. The light was coming from him. Where the shadows touched him, they ignited. They recoiled, writhing and flaking. Screams of rage became screams of pain.
The Blade could not be destroyed, but Antwyr, in the form it had adopted, could be injured.
The daemonic dark shrivelled before Crowe’s advance.
The annihilation of Dikaia resounded on all sides of the tower. The Sacrum Finem pounded the city and all its citizens to dust and glass. The army of the possessed dwindled further. The shadows receded, drawing in to their centre.
Though Crowe was still in shadow, he was no longer blind. The dense nothing he had entered upon reaching the summit was now a dense fog, rolling and swirling, concealing and revealing, but Crowe could see where he walked. He broke into a run. The eye of the storm was close.
Antwyr attacked first. There was a sudden rush of shadows to Crowe’s right. He turned and started to raise his sword. The monster that had been Otto leapt at him, the Black Blade raised high. The form was still growing and changing, becoming a manifestation of Antwyr as the daemon worked to free itself at last from the sword. It was a creature of spikes and armour, taller and broader than Crowe. It was faster too. It was wielded by the Blade, and it moved with all the speed and accuracy of its lethal will.
Crowe had come to take the sword by surprise. Antwyr attacked first. Yet as he tried to block its swing and knew he was too slow, Crowe tasted the first hint of triumph.
The Black Blade slammed against his Nemesis sword, knocking it aside and chopping into Crowe’s right pauldron. Antwyr cut deep. It drew blood. Crowe dropped in the direction of the blow, pulling the sword from his shoulder, and rolled away. He came to his feet, blade ready. He launched himself at the daemon, storm bolter firing as he swung his sword. As he attacked, he thought, You are desperate. There was too much rage in that blow. You could have done better. You fear me.
His bolt shells tore into the armoured surface of the daemon. Chunks of plates and spikes flew into the air. The monster ignored the hits. It swung the Blade with such force it countered Crowe’s blow and cut into his arm. He stepped back. It whirled around and brought the sword in sideways with both arms. It would have cut a marble column in two. Crowe leapt backwards. The tip of Antwyr cut into his chest-plate, slicing through a purity seal.
Sloppy, he thought. Antwyr was trying to kill him with a single, massive strike. You are desperate. You never thought I would get this close. My presence is a surprise. You feel you are in danger. I am not the one on the defensive.
Antwyr pressed the attack. Each swing was huge and fast. It forced Crowe backwards. When he parried, he felt the shock travel up his arm as if he had struck a mountain. He aimed a few blows of his own, but he did not expect them to land. His defence was his careful assault. He studied the Black Blade’s strategy. He watched for a mistake. He watched for the true opportunity.
Militant patience.
The daemon roared. There were two souls in its voice. Crowe heard the rage of Antwyr, and he heard the agony of Otto Glas. In that daemonic shape, the trace of the Lord Governor remained, and it suffered.
Antwyr came down on Crowe with an overhead slash. This blow was too fast, too strong. It was a strike to cleave granite. He blocked it. His Nemesis sword exploded. Sacred energy burst into the night, crackling ball lightning that blinded as it fought its last against the daemon. Crowe fired his bolter into the blaze, while his sanctified wrath gathered in his right hand. Antwyr stumbled back from the sacred light. The bolt shells did not injure it, but the impact of the volley knocked it back another step. It snarled as it charged towards him once more, the sword overhead again. Now, confident it was about to deliver the death stroke, Antwyr spoke to Crowe.
‘I will burn stars without you, Garran Crowe.’
‘You will burn indeed,’ Crowe said. He unleashed the cleansing flame into the face of the monster. The fire engulfed its horned head. The dual voice bellowed again, only now both souls were in pain.
The monster let go of the Blade with one hand and lashed out blindly. It struck Crowe, knocking him to the side and down. He jumped up again and put a few more steps between himself and the daemon. It recovered and charged him again.
He was ready. He had seen the mistake. For a fraction of a second, as the fire of purity had burned away the daemonflesh, the body had leaned into the flames. It had sought the scouring. The movement was brief. It was almost imperceptible. Crowe had seen the tormented soul of Otto Glas reach for salvation. For that infinitesimal moment, the sword’s control had slipped, and the damned Lord Governor had exerted some influence on the body.
The clouds of shadow broke apart. The Black Blade gathered its strength. The armoured face looked at Crowe. Fury mixed with two desperations in its eyes. It attacked, swift as thought and powerful as a Dreadnought.
Crowe had its measure. He stood his ground.
Militant patience.
Strike now.
He drew upon the full breadth of his faith, and with both hands extended, he spoke the words of banishment. He did not seek to expel the being inside the sword. No force known to the Grey Knights could do that.
He sought instead to banish it from the body of Otto Glas.
He did not break Antwyr’s hold on the Lord Governor, but he weakened it. He weakened it enough for Otto to make a heroic grasp at redemption. As it reached Crowe, the monster jerked. Energy leaked from its blow as it thrust the point of the Blade at Crowe’s chest. Otto fought to arrest the attack. He failed, but what he did was enough.
Crowe braced himself, accepting the sacrifice he must make. Let my task begin here, he thought.
Antwyr’s point slammed into his chest-plate. It pierced the armour and stabbed through his black carapace. It sank deep into his flesh and broke through his ribcage. Bone splintered. Blood jetted onto the arms of the daemon.
The tip stopped just short of Crowe’s heart. Otto’s victory.
Crowe’s wound was his trap. I have you, he thought. He grasped the Blade with both hands. He turned and yanked with all his strength. He held on through might and will and blood sacrifice.
The hilt pulled free of the monster’s hands.
The last of the shadow clouds vanished. Crowe grunted and pulled the sword from his chest. He reversed it and grasped the hilt.
No! Antwyr screamed. Release me, release me, release me. This will not be!
The daemon dropped to its knees. Too much of Antwyr was still within the sword. With the connection severed, the manifestation began to disintegrate. Spikes crumbled away, armour sloughed off.
No no no no no no no! the Blade howled.
The monster appeared to shrink from the inside. Its form became brittle and cracked. It fell in on itself, then flaked into ash, which whirled away on the wind. What remained was the size and silhouette of a mortal. It was a thing of shattered and suppurating grey. It was a body that had been burned to death, but still somehow moved.
His lungs gurgling with blood, Crowe moved to the thing. He held the sword fast. Its will raged in his mind. He sensed a potential that would leap from his fist if he relaxed his vigilance.
The wreckage of Otto Glas looked up at Crowe. Eyes that had gazed beyond agony pleaded for release. Otto raised hands whose fingers were leprous stubs. He moved his lips, but they turned to powder, leaving behind grey, rotting teeth. Otto could not speak. He was eloquent in his desperation.
‘You have betrayed the Emperor,’ Crowe told him. ‘You struck down his champion.’ He gestured with his left hand, encompassing the martyrdom of Dikaia. ‘These are your works.’
Otto remained motionless. He did not shake his head in denial. He held his arms as they were. His lidless eyes gazed at Crowe. They made no claim to mercy. They asked only for holy destruction.
Crowe nodded. ‘There is no redemption,’ he said. ‘But there is an end.’
For the first time, Garran Crowe swung the Black Blade of Antwyr, and severed the crumbling skull of Lord Governor Otto Glas from its body.
Then there was only ash, vanishing on a wind that seemed to cry out.
Ash, and the dawn of the hard destiny.
Chapter Thirteen
BEROEA
An armada of the air rumbled across the ocean towards the southern continent. Valkyries and heavy lifters transported all that remained of Sandava II’s militia. The remnant, regrouped at the base outside Egeta, was a muster of five companies of infantry and armour. Enough to defend a city against a human foe. Enough to raze that same foe’s city to the ground. The aircraft flew in tight squadrons, the olive green of their hulls a dark, roaring shadow in the squall-tossed air. Ahead of the transports, a single, silver-grey craft carried more power than all the others combined. The Purgation’s Sword led the crusade to Beroea.
I made you a promise once, said the sword. You turned away from me. I make the promise again. You wield me now. Wield me as you should. We will lay waste to Beroea. The galaxy will fall before us.
Held by his grav-harness, Crowe sat at the rear of the Stormraven’s troop compartment, as far from his battle-brothers as was possible in the cramped conditions. The Black Blade of Antwyr was sheathed at his side. He kept one hand on the pommel of the hilt, a reminder to the sword that it was his prisoner, and an act of conscious guardianship for himself.
In truth, he thought, I am the sword’s prisoner too. He considered the fact dispassionately, without rancour or regret. Iron acceptance was the twin of militant patience. It too was a critical part of his task. His duty. His destiny.
The sword had moved on from its raging cries at the moment of its capture. There had been a few other moments when it had screamed in Crowe’s mind, but for now it was content to whisper and scrape. The eating at his mind was more insidious than it had been when Gavallan held the sword. Crowe understood now what the champion had been going through at the same time he had been resisting Antwyr’s assaults. The sword reached much deeper. Each word cut into the citadel he had erected around the very core of his soul, and the depths of his mind. He knew the nature of his enemy far better now, and it knew him. It tapped and prodded and scratched and clawed at him. He was besieged. He would be forever. So he reinforced his ramparts as the sword chipped away at them, standing firm guard for the sake of his brothers, even as the necessary isolation around him grew.
You will succumb. You saw what I wrought at Dikaia. You will see what waits at Beroea. You will have need of me. You will see the truth.
Crowe had known that isolation would be his new existence. He had seen it in Gavallan. He was prepared. He accepted it. Even so, the experience of its birth was painful. It began the moment he took hold of the Black Blade. He felt it properly for the first time when the Purifiers had returned to the Egeta base.
After the battle. Before the next. And another battle, his lone war, his unending war, already under way.
‘You stand against Exterminatus for this world, then,’ Sendrax had said. ‘Even now the sword is captive once more.’
‘Yes,’ said Crowe. ‘It was a relic that began this war. Our mission will end when we have recovered it.’
‘Recovery rather than destruction.’
‘Perhaps both. We cannot be sure of the latter without the former. What is true of the Black Blade may be true of the mask. Too much has gone wrong, and there have been too many dark patterns to ignore the possibility. We must take the mask. Then we can consider the fate of Sandava II.’
Sendrax nodded, acquiescing to the need for the mission.
Both squads stood on the far side of the base’s briefing room from Crowe. They did not approach the tacticarium table unless he moved away from it. He did so again now, shutting off the hololithic display of Beroea. His brothers remained where they were. They were keeping their distance from him. He could sense their discomfort. A wall had come down between him and all other souls.
They are ungrateful, said the sword. You led them to victory. Now they seek to flee your presence.
He would remove himself to an unused corner of the base until preparations were concluded, Crowe decided. Except in combat, he would be a liability. He would do this without announcing it. He would spare himself the sight of relief in his brothers’ eyes.
‘Then we know what we are about,’ Crowe said. He headed for the exit of the command bunker, but paused there for a moment. ‘Brother Drake, will you speak with me?’
Drake joined him. He concealed the effort it took him to do so, but Crowe saw the minute increase in tension around his jaw.
There were barracks at the north west of the base that no longer housed militia. The casualties at Dikaia had emptied it. Crowe walked towards it.
‘I would like you to speak with General Glas,’ Crowe said to Drake.
‘On a particular subject?’
‘More of a sounding. I’m interested in your impression of the state of her soul.’
‘You think she might be corrupted?’
‘I’m not sure. Her faith has been strong. But her decision to march into the bombardment zone is troubling.’
‘Would we be better leaving her troops here. If she is a potential threat…’
‘I don’t think she is. I have seen no signs of corruption in her subordinates. Have you?’
‘No,’ said Drake. ‘Given what they have witnessed, they seem strong of purpose and morally resolute by mortal standards.’
‘I agree. Unless we see signs of imminent danger, then I see no reason to leave a potentially useful asset behind.’ The conditions in Beroea were unknown. It had been more than a day, though, since the city had fallen. Long enough for the daemonic infestation to take firm hold. Crowe doubted the militia would survive there long. Still, Vendruhn’s troops might serve as a diversion. ‘There is something more,’ he continued. ‘Whatever strands are being woven together here, General Glas is to be part of the pattern. To leave her here would be to ignore that fact.’
‘Having her in Beroea may hasten its completion. The patterns have been dark ones, brother.�
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‘They have. So see what you make of her.’ Another task Crowe could no longer undertake himself. He was a danger to everyone. The sword would distort any interaction he would have. And the distortion would not be in his perception, but in the person he was near.
‘I will,’ Drake said.
And he had.
His report was uneasy, but inconclusive. It was not enough to remove Vendruhn and her troops from the coming struggle. And so the militia flew to the south with the Purgation’s Sword, where Crowe sat, conscious of the damage the hours did to his brothers, so close to the dread burden he carried, so close to its whispers and its threats.
Berinon’s voice came over the troop compartment’s vox-speaker. ‘Land on the horizon,’ he said. ‘We approach Beroea, brothers.’
Crowe looked out of the viewing block. The city’s peninsula was a narrow shape on the horizon, a darkness breaking the grey sweep of the water. He watched the city take on definition as they drew nearer. First it was a smudge. Soon it was a dark silhouette. He noted the towered bulge at its centre.
Crowe frowned. The location corresponded to the Ecclesiarchal Palace. The hololiths he had consulted at the base, however, had not suggested a structure of this height.
‘There was not enough punishment,’ she had told Drake. ‘It was cut short.’
Seated in the navigator’s seat of the Valkyrie, minutes away from first sight of Beroea, Vendruhn rehearsed the conversation again. She had spoken her truth to one of the Emperor’s unforgiving angels. She had not been cowed. The Grey Knight had found her on the exercise grounds. She was overseeing the disciplining of a trooper who had miscounted his squad’s stores of ammunition. The man, stripped to the waist, was held in one of the metal pillories. The flogging had begun just before Drake’s arrival. The Grey Knight had asked her how she viewed the siege of Dikaia, and she had told him.
‘Cut short?’ Drake said. ‘The city was destroyed. Its population was exterminated. How is that cut short?’
‘Our punishment. The one we mete out. The Emperor’s loyal subjects on Sandava II. With respect, lord, you do not know our world. Do you care about justice here?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘I… We were punishing the apostates. We were not able to complete our task.’ She had not destroyed the monster that had been her father. She had not restored the honour of her name. She looked away from the flogging for a moment to give Drake a hard stare. ‘Lord, I hope you do not mean to prosecute the war without us.’
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