Dante

by Guy Haley

  Araezon tugged aside Luis’ shirt, exposing the sores on his chest.

  ‘Some contamination, nothing too extreme,’ Araezon said to a thrall working by him. The man scribbled notes onto a long roll of parchment spilling over a portable writing desk strapped to his chest. ‘Tell me, what is your name?’

  ‘Luis, my lord,’ said Luis. Appalled at how meek he sounded, he stood taller and said again with greater force, ‘Luis, my lord.’

  ‘You appear frightened, Luis.’

  ‘I am frightened, my lord.’

  ‘And honest, an admirable quality,’ said Araezon. His voice was kindly, if harshened by his armoured suit’s emitter, but his aspect was warlike. His armour hummed. A blow from the sword at his side would turn Luis into scraps of flesh. ‘Why, if you are frightened, did you not turn away and go back to your people?’

  ‘Because fear is nothing,’ said Luis as defiantly as he dared. ‘I have been frightened many times. Fear is to be ignored and overcome.’

  ‘Tell me, why have you come?’ asked Araezon. ‘Do you wish to fight, to win glory? Do you wish to live forever?’

  ‘No, my lord. No man lives forever, not even an angel. I wish to serve. I want to serve the Emperor, and through Him I will serve mankind.’

  Araezon gave Luis a long, appraising look.

  ‘Luis… Luis. That is a boy’s name. You are of the clans that do not use their angel names in the day-to-day speech?’

  ‘No, my lord. I mean, yes, my lord.’

  Araezon made a noise that might have been a laugh. ‘I understand. You will have to reveal it, if you are to be chosen.’

  Luis kept his eyes on Araezon, but watched Malafael from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Go on then, boy, tell him,’ growled Malafael. ‘Tell him your angel name.’

  Luis hesitated. Nobody but family knew a person’s angel name in his clan. They were precious words, kept safe from the searing sun and corrosive salt, pure things in an impure world. Luis had voiced it a handful of times in his entire life.

  ‘It is… My name is Dante,’ he said, the word strange on his own lips.

  ‘Your opinion of Dante, brother?’ asked Araezon of Malafael.

  The black angel nodded.

  ‘Group Areosto,’ said the priest to the thralls. They led him away and sat him with other boys he did not know. In time, Florian was brought, breaking into a huge, black grin as he was led to Luis’ side. Lorenz joined them too.

  Their group was smaller than the others. Luis fretted over whether this was good or bad. The day dragged on. They were offered neither food nor drink, but were forced to rely on what little they had. A boy in their group fainted from the heat. He was dragged from their group into another. It was the first sign of the winnowing that was to come.

  The last boy was tested and taken to the middle group.

  ‘The initial testing is done! Prepare now for our judgement of the First Winnowing,’ said Araezon. ‘Group Kaifus, you are not compatible with our gifts. No matter your personal qualities, you are not fit to serve with us and can never be. Go from this place and live out your lives among your people. Leave with honour, but do not attempt the choosing again.’ The red-robed thralls got the boys to their feet and led them from the square.

  ‘Group Hadrianus, your talents are insufficient to allow admittance to our brotherhood, but you are suitable to join us as blood thralls. You are exceptional youths, with the qualities needed to be leaders among your people, and so you must decide whether to come with us or return home. If you choose to serve, many of you will attend upon the angels of death as equerries, and you may reach high office among the servants of our Chapter. Be not sorrowed, for but a few shall be angels, and we do you a great honour. Make your choice.’ The second group were roused. Faced with the stars or the desert, most chose the stars, and those so electing were also led from the square.

  That left the third group, the smallest at around five hundred youths. Luis’ heart was in his mouth. He knew what was coming, but he could not believe it until he had heard it from the Blood Angel’s own lips.

  ‘Group Areosto, you shall be further tested. You have been selected as potential recruits. You are now aspirants to the Blood Angels Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.’

  They did not dare cheer or speak. Lorenz nodded, as if he were a sagacious elder with the right to agree to an angel’s words. Florian grinned madly.

  Luis’ heart pounded. He did not smile. He had no illusions about what lay ahead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DANTE DISARMED

  998.M41

  Asphodex High Anchor

  Cryptus System

  The lavateserium blasted Dante’s armour and weapons from every side with jets of boiling water. The smell of xenos blood filtered through the open vents of his breathing mask. The scent revolted Dante, and he shut the mask, switching to his battleplate’s internal oxygen supply. Water ran over his eye-lenses. The drumming of droplets on the gold reminded him of the first time he had seen rain. There were many things he could no longer recall – Space Marine or not, there is only so much a human mind can hold. But some things he could never forget. He remembered standing on brilliant yellow mosses under the open sky as a torrential downpour soaked his combat fatigues and battered his skin. He held his mouth open, letting the warm water fill it. The ghost of a smile haunted his lips as he remembered his Scout sergeant, Gallileon, hauling them all out of the rain and calling them a great many names angels should not know. All the gifts of the Emperor, the might of his comrades and teachers, the power of technology he had witnessed – it was all nothing compared to the sight of water falling freely from the sky. He could still not credit the miracle of oceans and rain.

  The smile faded. The others in his training group were dead, the last slain hundreds of years ago. Memories were precious things that bound people together. No one shared his any more.

  The lavateserium played quiet notes. The water shut off, the final drops plinking on the metal decking. Swirls of filthy water drained away. A broad-sweep decontamination laser played over the armour, flash-drying the water and killing everything on the surface. Superheated steam burst all over him. He could not feel the scalding heat. The rapid increase in temperature registered as a brief flicker on the faceplate read-outs of his sensorium. The door opened onto his armourium.

  The cleaning was not complete. The decontamination was ineffectual, a ritual that had lost all practical use with time. The armour was still filthy. Alien fluids were caked in every crevice, gumming up the ribbing of the flexible joints, encrusted in the sculpted musculature of his torso. The jewels that studded his plates were rimmed with gore. But the wash was a start on the slow road to purity.

  He stepped out. The door closed, shutting away the utilitarian machinery of the lavateserium, and leaving him surrounded by beauty.

  Dante’s personal armourium was a haven of peace. Lit in the soft warm glow of a thousand red candles, it was gently perfumed by the scents of wax, fragrant oils, lapping powder, the dry smell of active stasis fields and rare incenses. The velvety quiet that accompanies candlelight draped itself over everything. In the many angles and nooks, rich shadows embraced warm light. At forty yards long and fifteen wide, the armourium was among the larger of his chambers. Art and war were equal parts of the Blood Angels character. Everything they had was glorious in decoration. The high roof was supported by vaulting whose perfect simplicity revealed the complex mathematics that went into its construction. Glass-fronted recesses set between carved figures of angels held dozens of different weapons. Dante was expert in the use of all of them, and trained regularly with every kind, though he rarely used anything but the perdition pistol and the Axe Mortalis. Bronze doors sealed away external noise. The beat of the Blade of Vengeance’s cannons was a heartbeat rumble, easily ignored.

  Dante could not deny a weary sigh as he stepped onto the runner carpeting the stone floor the length of the gallery.

  Arafeo waited ther
e, half a dozen hooded blood thralls in the shadows behind him to attend to Dante’s disarmament.

  ‘We are ready, my lord,’ said Arafeo, his voice cracked with age. ‘I have had a meal brought to your chambers and drawn your bath.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dante, and meant it. If there was one thing Dante wished to do more than anything else, it was to bathe.

  He walked the long gallery to the empty case where he kept his battleplate. His attendants came to him without speaking. Three of them took the Axe Mortalis from his right hand and set it into its stand. Two others unplugged the perdition pistol’s power feeds, and he relinquished it gladly. His fingers cracked as he uncurled them; he had been clutching it for so many days they had moulded themselves to its grip. Flakes of alien vitae fell upon the rich carpet.

  He reached the armour case and caressed its touch pad. The red light over the glass door clunked from red to green. The door opened with the pronounced whoosh of pressure equalisation. Candles fluttered in the sudden, brief gust. The arming stand moved out from the case on its armature with a long, solemn whine. It stopped, and spread its clamps. Dante turned around and reversed his battleplate into it. Soft-tipped claws gripped his jump pack. He raised his arms, and other clamps took his elbows. Rests ran out under his forearms to support the weight. Grips closed around the back plates of his greaves.

  He blinked away the last few datascreeds still crowding his faceplate display, then shut down the reactor of his armour. Power cut from its supplemental musculature, it sagged heavily, pressing down on his shoulders. The neural spikes that linked his nervous system to the battleplate withdrew and he gasped at the cold, sharp pain.

  Arafeo beckoned attendants forwards. They brought wheeled tables topped by slabs of exotic stone. Tools gleamed on one. Whispering the rites of disarming, they began to take Dante’s golden battleplate off. Dante allowed his eyes to close. Under his breath, he spoke the rite of disarming with his attendants.

  ‘The battle is done,’ they said, ‘though war never ends. Brief rest for the warrior, service for the wargear. Praise the machine-spirits that guard us in battle.’

  Sanguinius’ death mask came off first. Of all the pieces of his suit, this was the greatest burden, though not the heaviest. As it was pulled off his head, he felt Sanguinius’ presence go with it. It was a mental trick. If Sanguinius lingered anywhere it was not in the mortal world. His legacy, however, was more potent than ever.

  The softseal about the neck was taken away next. The material peeled from him like a sticky kiss, releasing the humid air trapped between his battleplate and arming suit. He wrinkled his nose at his own stink, brewed in his armour by days of hard battle. The scent of angels was no more pleasant than that of other men, and possessed of harsh, chemical notes besides – volatile by-products of his enhanced biology expressed through his sweat that no amount of perfume could mask.

  The servants worked quickly. With many hands and specialist tools they removed his armour far faster than he could have alone. Once his power cabling was all disconnected and the armour’s plastron removed, he was near free. The blood thralls moved onto his legs, whispering their hushed praises to the armour’s machine-spirits as they worked. Once the front plates of his cuisses were removed he did not wait for his greaves to be taken apart, but stepped out to stand in his close fitting bodysuit. The tables were covered in armour components. A Space Marine might remove his armour himself if need be, but total disassembly was the proper way to treat such sacred gear. Without cleansing, testing and servicing between campaigns, its machine-spirit would grow sick.

  In contrast to the gilded, decorated exterior of the armour, the short-sleeved bodysuit was plain and practical. Two of his servants unsealed it from around his neck. It adhered to him by a layer of grimy sweat and came away from his skin wetly, snagging on the metal of his neural interface ports. He stepped forwards again to free himself from the clinging, rubbery fabric of the suit completely, leaving his naked skin to cool in the ship’s air.

  Dante turned back. His armour had been taken apart. His jump pack hung trailing cables from the stand’s claw. Blood thralls were wrapping other components in clean cloths of red silk, bowing, and withdrawing.

  As soon as he was done in his quarters, his servants would emerge from their alcoves and take away his wargear to the workrooms hidden behind the armourium’s ornate walls. There they would clean arms and armour fastidiously, repair them and bring them back to their stands. When he returned, his weapons would gleam, and his armour would be assembled upon its stand in isolate purity. One war washed away by diligent hands, the weapons would be ready to be employed in another. The only stains left would be those upon his soul.

  He reflected that the last time he would undergo this ritual would come soon. But not yet, not yet. Not while the candle of one human soul burned in the galaxy would he rest. He had sworn that long ago, and Dante was no oathbreaker.

  He walked the length of the gallery naked. Embedded servitor wardens drew open the armoured doors to his bathhouse. Dante passed into an antechamber decorated floor to ceiling with mosaics of dark red, gold and white tesserae. Standing in the centre of the room, he allowed his servants to wipe the worst of his battle sweat away with warm cloths, and went into his calderum. For half an hour he sat in heat high enough to bake an unaltered human, letting scented steam soothe his aching muscles. From there he stepped into a cubicle, where hundreds of litres of iced water were dumped on his head and gurgled away through ornamental drains. Skin tingling, he passed into the colonnaded main bath. Large enough to swim in, the bath was milky white with restorative minerals. Fine art beautified the walls and ceiling.

  He descended its fan of steps, allowing the water’s blood-warmth to embrace him, and sank up to his neck.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The rumble of the ship’s weaponry matched the run of his pulse. He sank into a meditative state. He wished he were able to take to his sarcophagus in the Hall of Making, and sink into the long rest. This yearning went with him as he drifted into a torpor that was halfway between sleep and death.

  ‘My lord?’ Arafeo was standing by the edge of the pool. The white water still rippled with the regular thump of the bombardment cannons. The Long Rest of Baal was a distant dream. Mortal concerns never ceased.

  ‘I have slept?’ Dante said. The water had dropped a fraction of a degree in temperature. He had been idle longer than he intended.

  ‘Only for two hours, my lord. Captain Aphael is en route to the fleet. We have word from Captain Phaeton also. He has engaged a fragment of the splinter, but does not anticipate much delay. He should be with us presently.’

  ‘Why was I not woken?’ said Dante.

  Arafeo looked his lord in the eye, an action that had taken him half a century to dare to attempt. He was one of the few Dante allowed to see his unshielded face. They were both old men, in their way.

  ‘Because I would not allow them to,’ said Arafeo. ‘You exhaust yourself, my lord. You must rest.’

  ‘I thank you for your concern, but I am needed more than I need rest,’ said Dante. He pushed himself up out of the bath with his powerful arms, and got out of the water. The hairs on his arms were a pale white gold, still fine. His muscles rippled under skin only now losing the tautness of youth.

  ‘My lord commander, if I might be so bold as to say, if you destroy yourself for want of rest, those needs will go unfulfilled.’

  Arafeo’s hands were twisted with arthritis, like roots, and shook as he held out Dante’s towel. Dante’s eyes rested on them. Arafeo looked away, ashamed at his feebleness. If only he knew we share the same worries, thought Dante.

  ‘I should rest, and you should rest,’ said Dante.

  The man kept his trembling arms outstretched.

  ‘How can I rest when you will not?’

  ‘You are not I. Different fates are ours,’ said Dante.

  ‘Your responsibility is by far the graver, my lord. If I had passed my tests
at the Place of Choosing, then perhaps my burden would be similar, but I did not. I am a thrall, not an angel. But we all must serve the Emperor in our own way, and I shall help you carry your burden in whatever small way I can.’

  ‘I promise, after the meeting of the Red Council, I shall rest.’

  Mollified, Arafeo nodded.

  Dante took the towel. Arafeo bowed and went to fetch Dante’s goblet from a side table. He was getting slow. The tremble in his limbs grew more pronounced when he was tired, and Arafeo was tiring more readily with every day.

  One thousand five hundred years of grinding war versus eighty years of humble service, but they were both servants. If given the choice, Dante wondered, would I exchange places with my equerry? Not willingly, he answered himself. But if forced to, I would not rue the change. Service is service. All have a part to play, he told himself. Arafeo is right in that.

  His servant’s humility humbled him. ‘Arafeo,’ he said gently. ‘You have done enough for me today. Thank you for shielding me from my own labours awhile. It is appreciated. Rest now, I command it. I can pour my own wine.’

  The wine salver rattled as Arafeo set it down. He bowed his head unhappily. He did not want to be dismissed, nor did he want to be seen as old.

  Save the man’s pains or save his pride. Every decision Dante had to make in these black times, from the most inconsequential to those that could topple the Imperium, was a choice between two evils. Good had leached from the galaxy. He was weary of decision. Not a flicker of this was displayed on his face, still inhumanly beautiful despite his age.

  ‘As you wish, lord commander,’ said Arafeo quietly. He departed reluctantly.

  Dante went to the table and drank the wine. He felt bad for Arafeo, and annoyed that he had to order him away for his own good. He had to be careful that that irritation did not transfer itself to Arafeo himself. It was not his servant’s fault he had aged.