The Death Guard had known a thousand battles, and in every one the constant clatter of weapons had been the music that accompanied them; the hue and cry of fighting men locked in struggles for their lives. Now, out on the airless sun-blinding whiteness of Luna, there was no sound at all. The silence was broken only by the rush of blood in his veins, the rhythm of his exhalations. There was an absence of scents too: the foetid stink of the creature that wreathed it inside the citadel was gone. In its place Garro could only smell the tang of his own blood and the acrid traces of burning plastics from his armour’s damaged servos.
They fought unarmed, hand-to-hand, every battle skill they could draw upon pushed to the fore. Using the low gravity to his advantage, Garro pushed off a rock outcropping and let his momentum flip him up and around. He turned a boot to meet his enemy’s face and saw a compound eye burst into a cloud of polluted blood. The droplets froze instantly into hard black jewels that scattered over the moon dust. Some questioning, analytical portion of the battle-captain’s mind wondered how it was that this freak could even exist in the vacuum. It had no suit seals, as Garro’s did, no airtight layer of atmosphere to sustain it. There were patches of dark frost on the limbs of the pestilent champion where the cold of space had iced over spilt fluids, but still it lived on, defiant by its very existence.
He took a blow that knocked the breath from him, ignoring the new alert runes that haloed his vision. Streams of white vapour – precious air – issued out from points of damage beneath the eagle cuirass. Eventually suffocation would come, even to an Astartes. ‘You must die, abomination,’ Garro said aloud, ‘even if it be my last victory!’
The Lord of the Flies pressed upon him, and Garro’s back slammed into the wall of the crater, into the inky shadows cast by the rock formation. The ruined insect face leered over him and the great claw tore the cuirass from him, tossing it away. He fought back, but the Decius-thing was faster. Burning pain lanced into him as the warped Astartes bored the serrated talons through layers of ceramite and flexsteel. The thing was going to rip his armour open and expose the meat inside to the killing vacuum.
‘Is this my duty?’ Garro asked. ‘I am Death Guard… I am dead…’ A sudden sorrow engulfed him, the weight of all his darkest, most morose moments returning as one. Perhaps it was fitting that he perished here, in this lifeless stone arena. His Legion was already destroyed. What was he now? No more than a relic, an embarrassment, his warning delivered and his purpose ended. The cold was filling him, leeching out the life from his bones. Perhaps it was for the best, to accept death. What else was there for him? What did he have left? His vision blurred, the pressure pushing him down.
Faith.
The word exploded inside him. ‘Who?’ he gasped. ‘Keeler?’
Have faith, Nathaniel. You are of purpose.
‘I… I am…’ Garro choked, blood in his mouth stifling his voice. ‘I am…’ His fingers touched loose rock and closed around a fist-sized stone. ‘I am!’
With a bellow of exertion, he swung the piece of moon rock and slammed it hard into the Lord of the Flies. The impact echoed up his arm and the mutant fell back, a great curl of dead skin flapping back to reveal a distorted jawbone and a forest of teeth. Garro threw himself forward and clasped at his fallen sword. The chain of Kaleb’s icon was snagged around the hilt and he caught the brass links in his fingers, dragging the weapon into his grip. Then Libertas was in his hands and he felt a surge of power from the mere act of holding it once more. He felt complete, he felt right. Garro had told Kaleb of the weapon’s origin, and now as the globe of Terra became visible at the lunar horizon, the blade made all his doubts and pains vanish.
With a sword in his hand and the God-Emperor at his back, the Death Guard realised that his duty was far from over. He would not die today. Nathaniel Garro was of purpose.
The creature that he had once called brother was on its knees, trying to gather up the pieces of its face and press them back together. He had blinded it. Garro loped to the mutant’s side and drew back the sword. His breath came in shallow gasps and he brought the weapon to bear. For a moment, there was pity in Nathaniel’s eyes. Shame and compassion warred for a brief instant across his expression. Poor, foolish Decius. He was right. He had been forsaken, but only by his own spirit.
The Lord of the Flies looked up to meet the edge of the blade. Garro beheaded the monstrous Astartes with a single strike of the sword, taking his enemy through the neck. The corpse tumbled away and burst silently into a cloud of blackened fragments. The papery twists turned in the darkness and disintegrated, into ash, into motes of black and then nothing. The head dropped to lie in the moon dust and twitched with unheard laughter. It melted even as Garro watched, curls of skin and flensed bone becoming cinders, as if burning from the inside out. Finally, a shimmering twist of smoky energy burst free and shot away, up into the sky, trailing sense echoes of mocking amusement.
You cannot kill decay. The words repeated in his thoughts, and with care Garro sheathed his weapon. ‘We will see,’ he said, tipping back his head so that he could take in the sight of the Earth rise.
The sphere of Terra shone in the darkness, the eye of a god turned to face a universe ranged against it. Garro placed his hands to his chest, palms open, thumbs raised, in the sign of the Imperial aquila. He bowed. ‘I am ready, lord,’ he told the sky. ‘No doubts, no fears, only faith. Tell me Your will, and Thy will be done.’
SEVENTEEN
The Sigillite Speaks
The Oncoming Storm
WHEN THE SILENT Sisters came for him, he was on one knee in the meditation cell, his sword drawn and the brass icon in his hands. The words of the Lectitio Divinitatus were on his lips, embedded in his thoughts after so many repetitions, and the women exchanged quizzical looks with each other to hear him murmur them beneath his breath. They summoned him with brisk gestures and he did as they demanded. His duty robes gathered in close around him, the feel of the roughly woven material on his skin still chafing on the new scars from his injuries and the vacuum burns. He left his power armour in the chamber, but the sword came with him. Libertas had not left his side since the duel in the Sea of Crises.
They led him up the length of the Somnus Citadel, to the glass needle at the very tip. It wasn’t until he entered and they closed the doors behind him that he laid eyes on another Astartes. It seemed like weeks since he had last seen a kinsman.
The figure came closer. The chamber was a cone made of glass triangles and thick coils of black metal, and the architecture cast strange shadows with sharp edges from the reflected earthlight. ‘Nathaniel. Ah, lad. We feared the worst.’
He nodded. ‘Iacton. I live still, with the grace of Terra.’
The Luna Wolf raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed.’ Unlike him, Qruze wore his battle armour, proudly sporting the colours of his old Legion.
There were other figures at the edge of the shadow and Garro studied them. The Oblivion Knight came forward with her novice behind her. ‘Sister Amendera,’ he said with a shallow bow. ‘Why have you summoned us here?’ He tried and failed to keep an edge of annoyance from his words. ‘What trial must we answer to now?’
Garro glanced at the novice, expecting the girl to provide an answer, but her face was flushed with tension and fear. At once, the Death Guard’s hands tensed around the scabbard of his weapon.
‘Others…’ Qruze warned, nodding into the shadows.
‘You are here, Astartes, because I have ordered it.’ The voice came from the dark. It was firm but quiet, not in the manner of a military commander, but that of an educator, a counsellor. A puff of flame flickered into being in the shadows and Garro saw the shape of a golden eagle sculpted with wings spread as if to take flight. A brazier burned underneath the raptor, tricking the eye with the dance of light and heat.
Footsteps approached, and with them came the heavy tapping march of a staff against the stone-tiled floor. Garro’s throat tightened as he flashed back to the assembly hall aboard the
Endurance and the arrival of his primarch, but it was not Mortarion who emerged from the shadows this time.
There were two men, but they were much more than that. Even barefoot, the taller of the two would easily have been a match for Iacton Qruze in his full armour. The watchful, hard lines of his face emerged from a suit of golden armour that was cut like that of a Terminator, but worn like that of a normal Astartes. Even at a distance, Garro could see an infinity of worked tooling in the etching that covered the glinting metal, the repeated shapes of eagles and lightning bolts. A cloak of rich red material hung around his shoulders and a towering gold helmet with a plume of crimson atop it was held in the crook of one arm. In the other, at an angle that betrayed the ease with which the warrior held it, rested a weapon that was half lance, half cannon: a guardian spear, the signature wargear of the Emperor’s personal guard, the Legiones Custodes. Garro had often heard it said that the Custodians were to the Emperor as an Astartes was to his primarch, and looking upon this man, he believed it. The warrior studied Garro and Qruze with a level, emotionless gaze.
The guardian’s presence alone was enough to indicate the lofty status of the man he accompanied, and they bowed to the hooded figure in his simple administrator’s robes. The man in the voluminous mantle would blend seamlessly into the masses of any Imperial hive city were it not for the staff he carried, atop it, the golden eagle in its basket of flames, with steel chains looping down the length, each inscribed with axioms. This was the Rod, and it could only be held by one man: the Regent of Terra himself, First of Council, Overseer of the Tithe and confidant of the Emperor.
‘Lord Malcador,’ said Garro. ‘What do you wish of us?’
He dared to raise his gaze. The Sigillite’s hooded glance came to rest upon him and although Nathaniel could not see his eyes, he was immediately aware that he was under intense scrutiny, in ways that he could only guess at. Malcador, so the stories said, was second only in psychic might to the Emperor. So unassuming in aspect, but here in the chamber with them the man exuded a serene kind of power, quite at odds with the brash energy of a warlord primarch, but no less potent.
At the corner of his vision, he saw the witchseeker back away a few steps, as if she were afraid to be too close to him. The Regent’s vision fixed Garro like a spotlight, sifting through his spirit like sand. He tasted a greasy, electric taint in the air. The Death Guard met it and did not resist. He had not come this far to keep secrets.
‘The Emperor protects,’ said the Sigillite slowly, as if he were reading the words from the page of a book. ‘He does indeed, Astartes, in ways that you cannot begin to comprehend.’ Malcador paused, musing. ‘I have heard the words of Rogal Dorn, examined the evidence of your testimony and the mnemonic records of the Lady Oliton, and thus I will be direct. Garro, you came home in hopes of seeking an audience with the Master of Mankind so that this warning could come to his ears. This will not be.’
Garro felt a flash of disappointment. Even after all that had happened, he still kept the light of hope alive. ‘But he will hear the warning, Lord Regent?’
‘You cannot come to Terra, so Terra comes to you.’ Malcador nodded at the staff. ‘I have heard the warning and that is enough for the moment. The Emperor is indisposed as he engages in his great works within the Imperial Palace.’
Garro blinked in surprise. ‘Indisposed?’ he repeated. ‘His sons turn against him and he is too busy to learn of it? I do not understand—’
‘No,’ said the Regent, ‘you do not. In time, these matters will become clear to all of us, but until that moment, we must trust in our master. The message has been delivered. Your obligation has been completed.’
Garro saw Qruze tense. ‘Is that why he is here, Lord Regent?’ The Luna Wolf nodded to the Custodian Guard. ‘Are we to be dealt with, to be removed from the field of play?’
Malcador was very still. ‘There are many on the Council of Terra who suggested that just such a resolution should take place. Matters of men’s loyalties once thought to be solid are now in flux.’
Garro took a step forward. ‘I will say to you, lord, what I said to the primarch Dorn. Are not our deeds enough to convince you of our fealty? I know you can see into the truth of a man’s heart. Look into mine, and tell me what is there!’
A hand emerged from the folds of the robes. ‘There is no need, captain. You have no call to prove yourselves to me. After your ordeal, I felt that you were owed the truth. I came here to give it to you in person, so that there would be no misunderstanding.’
‘And now?’ asked Qruze. ‘What of us, Lord Regent?’
‘Aye,’ said Garro, clutching the icon in his grip. ‘We cannot stay here, watching the stars and waiting for the day that Horus comes seeking battle. I request…’ He fixed the Regent with a hard glare. ‘No, I demand that we be given a purpose!’ Garro’s voice began to rise. ‘I am an Astartes, but now I am a brother without a Legion. Alone, I stand unbroken amid all the oaths that lie shattered around me. I am the Emperor’s will, but I am nothing if He will not task me!’
The Death Guard’s words echoed around the glass tower and Kendel’s novice shrank visibly to hear them. Malcador gestured with the eagle-head staff. ‘Only in death does duty end, Astartes,’ he said, with a hint of satisfaction, ‘and you are not dead yet. As we speak, the Lord Dorn assembles his plans to oppose Horus and the primarchs he has turned to his banner. Lines of battle are being drawn across the galaxy, arrangements for a war of such magnitude that mankind has never known.’
‘What will our place be in it?’
Malcador inclined his head in a tiny gesture. ‘There is a matter to which you will be set, not today, perhaps not for many months, but eventually. The Warmaster’s disposition has made it clear that the Imperium requires men and women of inquisitive nature, hunters who might seek the witch, the traitor, the mutant, the xenos… Warriors like you, Nathaniel Garro, Iacton Qruze, Amendera Kendel, who could root out the taint of any future treachery: a duty to vigilance.’
‘We are ready,’ said Garro with a nod. ‘I am ready.’
‘Yes,’ replied the Sigillite, ‘you are.’
HE FOUND VOYEN in one of the meditation cells, carefully ministering to his wargear. The Apothecary bowed slightly to him. Garro noted immediately that Voyen’s robes were the plain, unadorned clothes of a citizen petitioner, not the duty mantle of an Astartes. The sewn patterns of the two-headed aquila and the skull and star of the Death Guard were absent.
‘Meric?’ he asked. ‘We prepare to leave and yet you have kept yourself isolated from us. What’s wrong?’
Voyen halted and glance at his commander. Garro saw something new there, a kind of defeat, a melancholy that was etching into the lines of his face. ‘Nathaniel,’ he began, ‘I have read the tracts you gave me, and I feel as if my eyes have been opened.’
Garro smiled. ‘That’s good, brother. We can draw strength from them.’
‘Hear me out. You might disagree.’
The battle-captain hesitated. ‘Go on.’
‘I have kept this from you, from all of the others. What happened at Isstvan, what Horus and Mortarion did, and then Grulgor and Decius…’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘To my very core, brother, these things shook me.’ Voyen looked at his hands. ‘I found myself frozen, my weapons useless.’ His eyes met Garro’s and there was fear there, true terror. ‘It broke me, Nathaniel. These things, I fear I may be a part of them, responsible…’
‘Meric, no.’
‘Yes, brother, yes!’ he insisted. Voyen pressed something into his palm and Garro studied it: a bronze disc embossed with a star and skull symbol, crushed and twisted. ‘I must atone for my dalliance with the lodges, Nathaniel. The Lectitio Divinitatus has shown me that. You had me promise that if the lodge ever compelled me to turn from the Emperor, I would reject them, and so I do! The lodges were part of all this, you were right to shun them!’ He looked away. ‘And I… I was so very wrong to join them.’
The leaden certai
nty in his voice told Garro that no argument would shift his brother from this path. ‘What will you do?’
Voyen indicated his wargear. ‘I relinquish my honour as an Astartes and warrior of the XIV Legion. I have had my fill of death and treachery. My service from this point on will be to the Apothecaria Majoris of Terra. I have decided to dedicate the rest of my life to search for a cure for the malady that claimed Decius and the others. If Grulgor did not lie, then that horror may already be spreading among our kinsmen, and I must hold true to my oath as a healer above and beyond my oath as a Death Guard.’
Garro studied his friend for a long moment, then extended a hand to him. ‘Very well, Meric. I hope you will find victory in this new battle.’
Voyen shook his hand. ‘And I hope you will find victory in yours.’
‘NATHANIEL.’
He turned from the window of the observation gallery and gasped. The woman stepped out from between the two Silent Sisters and touched him on the arm. ‘Keeler? I thought you had been taken.’ She smiled a little, and he studied her. She seemed fatigued, but otherwise unharmed. ‘They have not hurt you?’
‘Is there ever a day when you don’t concern yourself with the welfare of others?’ she asked lightly. ‘I have been allowed a moment of respite. How are you, Nathaniel?’
He threw a look back at the curve of Terra beyond the armourglass. ‘I am… uneasy. I feel as if I am a different man, as if everything that led up to the flight from Isstvan was just a prologue. I am changed, Euphrati.’
They were quiet for a moment before he spoke again. ‘Was that you? In the citadel, when Decius broke free, and then again out on the surface? Did you warn me?’
‘What do you believe?’
He frowned. ‘I believe I would like a straight answer.’
‘There is a bond,’ said Keeler quietly. ‘I’m only just starting to see the edges of it myself: between you and me, between the past and the future.’ She nodded at the planet. ‘Between the Emperor and his sons. All things, but like all bonds, it must be tested to keep it strong. That moment is upon us now, Nathaniel. The storm is coming.’
The Flight of the Eisenstein Page 33
