Dante

by Guy Haley

  One last attempt saw him fly fifty yards up. There, his wings failed to catch the wind when he dipped down. He went hurtling at the ground. At the last moment, he pulled up into a deliberate stall, braking enough that he hit the ground with merely bruising force. His wing spars shattered around him, tangling him in leather and straps as he rolled over and over violently along the dune-choked riverbed.

  Groaning, he pulled himself into a sitting position and shed the wings with the help of his knife.

  Boys sped through the sky, their whoops distorted by their speed. Wretchedly, Luis pulled out his bottle and drank greedily of his water. Once his thirst was slaked, his failure hit him.

  He had no idea where he was. Switching his pack to his back, he stood, oriented himself with the line of youths winging their way eastwards and began to follow.

  Firstnight ended. The nightwind blew, ten minutes too late to help him. Truenight fell. Luis continued his trek by the light of Baal and Baalind. The river of water died pathetically, sinking into the sand and leaving a series of brackish pools behind, until these too disappeared and the ancient riverbed continued dry as old bones. The Wind River lost its force, its constant blow turning fitful, then dispersing, until it had blended itself with the slackening nightwind of Baalfora. The valley sides receded further. The western mountains were a line as brown as old blood; the eastern range dwindled to nothing, surrendering to the dunes.

  On Luis plodded. It was too dark to see the flyers passing, and he kept his head down, doggedly placing one aching leg in front of another. He missed his staff.

  Day dawned. Luis continued. A flash caught his attention far away. He strained his eyes and lifted his goggles.

  Away on the horizon a forbidding cliff raised itself out of the desert, soaring to a thousand feet high from nothing. The rockface was in isolation from other such features, the hill it fronted sloping back and down almost as sheerly as the cliff. Before this anomalous mount was the titanic statue of an armoured angel facing the sky. His wings and arms were spread, a sword in one hand, a chalice in another.

  In permanent exultation, Sanguinius greeted the morning sun. A dim smear of brown blocks crowded his feet.

  Luis staggered forwards a couple of steps, then sank to his knees laughing. He was looking at the city of Angel’s Fall.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ANGEL’S FALL

  456.M40

  Angel’s Fall

  Planetary Capital

  Baal Secundus

  Baal System

  Hundreds of people waited in queues for the gates to open. Luis joined them before dawn. For three hours, he crept forwards. The bells of the city’s many cathedrals rang out in great cacophony every hour, calling out brazen songs to the Lord of Mankind and His most perfect son while His subjects shuffled in the dirt to be first to market. At the gates Luis was asked what his reasons for being at Angel’s Fall were. When he said he was there for the trials, the officials on the gate nodded as if that were the only answer they expected and pointed down the main street.

  ‘The feet of Sanguinius. There you will find the selection ground, the Place of Choosing. May the Emperor bless you in your endeavour.’ The blessing was heartfelt. Luis could only stare back as the men wished him well, his mouth open. Clear as day, they wore the winged blood drop of the Blood Angels on their shoulders. He gaped so long that the officials’ demeanour changed, and they shooed Luis out of the shade of the gate and into the city.

  ‘Deus Imperator regnum imperpetua! Praise the Emperor! Beware the heretic! Fear freedom of thought, for the unfettered mind is the pathfinder of heresy!’ A line of dirty men in torn robes trotted past, roped together at the neck, left hands on the left shoulder of the man in front. The leader rang a bell as he shouted out his homilies. Luis stared at this filthy procession, recoiling as one man raised his head; he had his lips and eyelids neatly sewn shut.

  Angel’s Fall was nothing like he expected, bigger and filthier than both Kemrender and Selltown. Both towns, huge to him, were revealed as the dusty villages they were. Luis had never seen so many people. They crammed the streets of Angel’s Fall from side to side. The stink of so many bodies together made him dizzy. And there were more than Baalites there; citizens of many worlds came on pilgrimage to the place where the most blessed of the Emperor’s sons had fallen from the sky.

  Rarely, a landing ship would thunder towards the city’s modest port. Later he would learn that only the most devout and important off-worlders were permitted to set foot on the planet, and then only within the confines of Angel’s Fall. As a consequence, he saw displays of wealth in the city that staggered him. Men and women in fine clothes, their bodies unmarked by rad burns and fat with easy living. It was his first inkling how poor a world Baal Secundus truly was.

  Sanguinius spread his bronze wings over the wretched poverty of the town, his beatific face turned away from the squalor towards the flawless blue of the heavens, as if he found his own people distasteful. The statue was immense, five hundred feet high, its wingspan almost as broad. As the sun rolled around its track, Sanguinius’ wings shadowed the town like a sundial. The shade was welcome, even if the Great Angel’s magnificence made Luis feel pathetic and powerless.

  He tarried awhile on the main street, suddenly sheepish about going to the Place of Choosing. He was unworthy, he was sure. He bought food he had no appetite to eat, and dawdled by stalls of goods so long their irate keepers moved him along.

  The push of the crowd drew him eventually to the square. He emerged from a warren of buildings into an unexpected plaza paved with hard Baalite granite glass and surrounded by stern buildings of stone and rockcrete. In the very centre was a massive, two-tiered podium of white, veined marble, a stone not found on Baal or its moons. The first tier made a balcony fenced by an ornate balustrade, interrupted by a broad staircase that led to a pair of massive bronze doors set into the second tier. The winged blood drop of the angels was cast into the doors. Upon the flat roof of the upper tier, the demigod perched on the tips of his toes, forever trapped in the act of taking flight. Overwhelmed by the sight of Sanguinius so close, Luis fell to his knees and mumbled a prayer, shamed at his presumption of coming here to serve him. Others, more jaded than he, banged into his back as he knelt. He did not care. Several minutes went by before he dared stand and look upon the Great Angel again.

  Everything else in Angel’s Fall was caked in a layer of dust. The animal smells of dung and richer stink of human ordure clung to its streets, but the monument and its statue were pristine. Hideous amalgams of man and machine moved over it, constantly mopping away the sands of Baalfora’s deserts as soon as they settled with gallons of precious water. The washers were followed by polishers, whose hands had been replaced with soft buffing tools. Around the base was an artful garden watered by the constant stream sluiced over the stone. The brilliant greens, reds and yellows of the flowers were strange and somewhat frightening to Luis’ eyes.

  About the garden gathered hundreds of boys. Different hues of skin and build, wearing clan marks ranging from the discreet to the bizarre. Most Luis did not recognise, but for all their diversity the majority were united in their disbelief at the city.

  Hesitantly, Luis went to join them.

  Among the boys Luis found sleeker youths for whom the city held no novelty. They were better fed and not so scarred by radiation and scouring sun. These were natives of Angel’s Fall. They had not endured what he had, and yet they were to be accorded the same chance as Luis. He saw this as a gross injustice. His fists clenched involuntarily. He wanted to hit them, to punch them in their perfect faces. His sudden anger surprised him. He turned away from these boys, seeking out others more like him. No matter how hard he looked, he found no others of the Salt Roamer clans.

  Wiry arms wrapped around him. Luis let out a sharp cry, drawing nervous laughter from the crowd. He turned around, ready to rebuke whoever had the presumption to grab him. He was on edge now, a greater terror than he had felt a
t any time of his journey fuelling his temper.

  ‘Get off!’ he snarled, throwing off the arms and whirling around.

  ‘Luis! It’s me!’ Florian’s black-toothed smile and reeking breath greeted him.

  ‘Florian?’ said Luis.

  Florian embraced him in a fierce hug. ‘I thought you were dead. I thought the blood eagles got you.’

  ‘They nearly did,’ said Luis.

  ‘Your first flight, and you made it through! It was his first flight!’ Florian said to the nearest boy. The boy raised his eyebrows to express his disinterest and looked away.

  Lorenz, the large boy from Angel’s Leap, shoved his way through the crowd after Florian.

  ‘So, you are also alive. I am impressed. You are in time for the choosing.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today, tomorrow. All week. There are young clansmen coming in from all over Baalfora still,’ said Florian. ‘Today is the first pick.’

  ‘They will take five hundred to the Place of Trials,’ said Lorenz. ‘Only one hundred will be taken to Baal. Only fifty will be chosen from the hundred.’

  ‘Imagine failing now,’ said Florian. ‘Imagine that.’

  Lorenz shrugged. ‘Better here than on Baal, perhaps. Those not selected here will at least live.’

  ‘They kill those that fail?’ said Florian.

  ‘We do not know,’ said Lorenz. ‘But at least those who fail here go home. No ever one returns from Baal.’

  ‘Then I will not fail,’ said Luis.

  Lorenz gave him a wry smile.

  They joined Lorenz’s following of boys, reduced to three by the brutal flight. All of them were less arrogant than before, and grudgingly welcomed Florian and Luis.

  At noon, the sun was directly behind Sanguinius. The front of the statue was cast into shadow, and a glorious halo erupted around his head.

  At the precise moment the sun wreathed Sanguinius’ face in fire, the bronze doors on the podium opened and a clarion fanfare of exquisite purity sounded. From out of the monument came a score of men in red robes, their faces hidden in hoods. They chanted benedictions in the high off-world tongue, swinging censers that billowed clouds of scented smoke as they walked around the platform, taking up position every five yards. Once they were all in place their singing stopped, and they cast back their hoods showing faces free of flaws.

  ‘The Blood Angels!’ said Florian in awe. The whole square was packed with boys and others who had come to look upon their lords. Silence fell on them, and they knelt in knots, until the whole square was on their knees on the hard stone.

  ‘Those aren’t the Blood Angels,’ breathed Lorenz as others came from the podium interior. ‘They are.’

  The first men out had been tall and heavily muscled, the most perfect examples of humanity Luis had ever seen. They were nothing compared to their masters.

  There were but the two of them. One was armoured in bone-white armour and blood-red robes, a velvet sack at his waist and a bulky device wrapped around his right gauntlet. The other was a giant in grim black battleplate decorated with bones, skulls and other signifiers of mortality. Luis was confused by their colours, wondering why they did not wear red as the legends said. They were armed as well as armoured. The skull-masked warrior carried a long staff topped with a winged skull; the one in white armour had a long, toothed sword at his side. Both wore pistols snug in holsters. Pistols. They were pistols, thought Luis, though they were as big as the boys’ torsos. The warriors were at least seven feet tall, and their armour made them even bigger. The metal of their boots rang on the stone, and their battleplate hummed with the activities of mysterious spirits. Rubies carved into blood drops hung from their weapons, glittering in the sun and clinking in the silence of the square.

  The Blood Angels stopped at the top of the stairs. Humming skulls swooped out over the crowd, artificial eyes winking in their sockets. A pair of cyber-cherubim flew behind, trailing a rippling silk flag emblazoned with the Chapter’s heraldry. They settled between the feet of Sanguinius, draping the flag down over the open doorway.

  Both warriors kept their helms on. The black-armoured warrior stayed back. The one in white and red stepped forwards to deliver the message of the angels.

  ‘I am Brother Araezon,’ he said, his voice carried to the back of the assembly by arcane means. Youths of more primitive clans started in fright. The voice was so clear, so perfect, many others among the crowd begged for forgiveness, or cried unashamedly. ‘I am the Sanguinary Priest of the Redeemers, the Tenth Company of the Blood Angels, Adeptus Astartes Chapter. I am the surgeon to the recruits of our order.’

  ‘I am Brother Malafael,’ said the black warrior, and his voice was as sonorous as a funeral bell. ‘Chaplain-Recruiter of the Tenth Company. It is we who will judge you worthy or not of proceeding from this Place of Choosing to the Place of Trials. There you shall be tested by our captain. Most of you shall be found wanting.’

  They swept the crowd of dirty, malnourished boys with their helm lenses. Araezon’s eyes rested on Luis a moment. Luis held the unblinking gaze despite the pressure of his regard. There was no expression to be read, but Luis felt contempt and pity, and a fierce, unattainable pride.

  ‘The path to elevation is arduous and fraught with peril,’ said Araezon. He spoke fairly, with an eloquence rare in the desert clans. ‘Of the many hundreds of you we choose, only a handful will be suitable in mind, soul and body to join our ranks. A number of you that fail will die. Those of you who succeed will be pledged to a life of service to the Emperor, and in that service you too shall die. Yours will be a life of constant war and hardship, with no satisfaction but that of war, and no rest but that of death. There will be no love but that of your brothers, no family, nothing to pass on to future generations save the stories of your deeds and service to humanity preserved in our Chapter records, and from those too you shall eventually fade. You will pass from the knowing of your clans – they will not learn if their sons dwell among the angels or have died in the attempt. Life on Baal Secundus is hard, we know this well, but it is life. To become an angel of death is to embrace death – it is to become death.’

  He paused and looked over the kneeling crowd again. ‘Look you upon the visage of my Brother-Chaplain. This death’s head is the future for you all, whichever path is chosen. We shall offer you a final choice, to be assured of the place of your death. Many of you have suffered long journeys to come here, have staked everything on the possibility of joining our brotherhood. Nevertheless, there is time to change your minds. Those of you who are wavering now should turn away and leave. Choose life over death, however short and cruel that life will be, and none shall judge you poorly. Those who do not, and who are chosen by my brother and I here, your life shall no longer be your own. That is the covenant we make between us. There can be no breaking it once it has been entered into. So then, speak! Who will leave?’ called Araezon.

  Falteringly, a boy got to his feet. Head bowed, he pushed his way from the square, a ripple of turning heads following him.

  Where one had gone, others followed, breaking from the crowd in shameful silence. Scornful whispers hissed after them.

  ‘Do not judge, lest ye yourselves be judged!’ shouted Malafael, and his voice was stern. It too was amplified by some means, and boomed off every surface, startling the crowd. Youth and adult onlooker alike begged for forgiveness. The black angel swept his staff of office around at shoulder height. His huge shoulder pads shifted to accommodate the movement, growling softly, as if alive. ‘In acknowledging a lack of courage can be found courage. Some of these boys will be your future leaders, your husbands, the fathers of your children. By fulfilling that role, they are the future of the Blood Angels too, for their sons will come here one day, and lo, they shall look upon the face of our lord Sanguinius, and they shall know no fear. For a man to acknowledge the true measure of his worth, no matter how paltry, is a moment of holy revelation. Do not scorn them!’

  The crowd quiet
ed. Luis looked around quickly; perhaps fifty or so boys from the hundreds who had originally gathered there had gone.

  ‘I ask again, who shall leave?’ Araezon shouted. No one else moved. ‘Very well, you who remain have consented to be tested. Your life now belongs to us. Begin!’ he declaimed, lifting his hand and letting it fall.

  Half the red-robed thralls came down from the podium, and went among the crowds. They selected boys, pulled them to their feet and led them trembling to the feet of the Blood Angels. The bravest of them shook in fear, the weakest wept uncontrollably to be so close to such godly power. The Sanguinary Priest took out a device from his belt, put it near the boys, then consulted it. The white angel spoke to each of them, too silently to be heard, and pulled aside items of clothing on some to perform physical examinations. Malafael gave his opinion with a tiny nod or shake of his head. The boys were led to one of three groups in front of the statue’s garden. From these areas the crowds were pushed back to make space for the growing selection groups.

  This went on for some time. The crowd shrank; the three groups of boys grew.

  Luis’ turn came. He was grabbed and taken up the steps. Araezon stood over him, taller than the statue itself, so it seemed. He had a strange odour about him, a mix of machine oils, perfume and a sweet, coppery scent Luis could not place. Araezon’s device was laden with needles that pierced Luis’ skin when pressed against it. The boy gritted his teeth against the pain. Araezon smiled.

  ‘You bear the testing well.’ The device made a musical note. A green light shone from its insides. Luis could not keep his eyes from the wonders of the angels. Technology on Baal Secundus was rugged, most of it battered, all the parts and materials for it scavenged from rad-wasted cities and endlessly recycled. He had never seen such elegant machines.