Dante

by Guy Haley

  One boy whirled around, gun ready to fire. Ristan put a spear through his heart.

  The others put their weapons down and held up their hands.

  ‘We should kill them all,’ said Ristan.

  ‘We should be merciful,’ said Luis.

  Lorenz, Duvallai and Kalael came through the opened gate. Lorenz grinned widely and slapped Luis on the back before heading up the tower to get the skull from its pole. This was red, but otherwise similar in age and condition to the green. The bone felt rough and warm in his hands. Luis wondered who he had been.

  ‘Take their guns and load them,’ said Luis. ‘Tie them up. Lorenz, get the door off its hinges.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ereos. ‘We should just hold it.’

  ‘We’ll be outnumbered if they come back. We need to make them angry, take them off guard.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Lorenz. The hinges were simply made, and it was the work of minutes to bash out the pins and throw them down. Meanwhile, the others ripped strips from the clothes of their prisoners and bound them hand and foot.

  The captured boys glared angrily at Luis’ men.

  ‘Now what, Luis?’ asked Lorenz. ‘They might have our totem.’

  ‘Ristan, hide this in the maze, in case they take the fort back,’ said Luis, pushing the skull into Ristan’s hands. ‘The rest of us are going to wait.’

  ‘In the fort?’ said Ereos. ‘We took the gate down!’

  ‘Only some of us in the fort,’ said Luis. ‘Wait and see.’

  Ten minutes later Barrazael’s men came running from the direction of the western fort whooping in triumph. One of them carried the green-stained skull victoriously in his hands. Several were wounded, and three had not come back. Luis watched them unobserved.

  ‘Get back into the fort! Take up your stations,’ said Barrazael triumphantly. ‘They’ll try to get back at us.’

  ‘That’s if they dare!’ laughed one of the boys.

  Luis noted only half of them had reloaded their guns in their haste to be away. He smiled to himself.

  The war party slowed. ‘The gates!’ cried one.

  A good third of them instinctively ran for the fort.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Barrazael, realising too late he was looking at a trap.

  Luis stood from his hiding place and aimed his gun at Barrazael’s chest.

  ‘Surrender and give me the skull.’

  Barrazael didn’t even pause to consider Luis’ command.

  ‘Ambush!’ he roared. His war party turned and charged. Luis fired his gun, impaling one boy through the stomach. The others faltered.

  ‘There’s only one! He’s only got one shot!’ urged Barrazael.

  ‘Wrong,’ said Luis, dropping his gun and retrieving the other from where it leaned against the rock by his legs.

  His warriors rose up from their hiding places, surrounding the group. In the fort, Ereos and Ristan emerged.

  ‘Now surrender,’ said Luis.

  Barrazael’s face went bright red. ‘Attack!’ he spat.

  Luis dropped him with his second spear. Half of Barrazael’s remaining aspirants milled about. The others attacked ferociously. One leapt at Luis, and both of them fell to the ground. The boy was called Garviel. Luis had trained with him several times over the month. They had got on fine. That didn’t stop Garviel from trying to kill him.

  Garviel got onto Luis’ chest, hands locked about his throat. Luis bucked and kicked, but Garviel was much heavier than he. He spread both arms, barely resisting the instinctive but useless urge to claw at Garviel’s hands. His left hand found a rock. The rock met Garviel’s temple with a horrible hollow sound. Garviel made a strangled noise, but his hands remained tight around Luis’ throat. Black blurred Luis’ vision. He smacked again and again, until Garviel fell sideways off him.

  Choking, Luis got onto his hands and knees. His throat was swollen and he could barely breathe.

  ‘Luis!’ Lorenz dropped into the crevasse. He hauled the smaller boy up. ‘Are you all right?’

  Luis nodded. Lorenz waved the green skull in Luis’ face.

  ‘Our skull! We’ve won!’ Not waiting for Luis to recover, he hauled him out onto the surface of the rock. Seven boys lay dead on the stone, their blood running into the gaps. Ereos was among them. Ristan and Laziel covered the survivors of Barrazael’s band.

  ‘We did it!’ said Lorenz. ‘Both skulls! All thanks to you, we have a chance of being angels!’

  Luis nodded wordlessly. His ears filled with a buzzing noise. His vision sparkled. The stench of blood filled his nostrils. Lorenz and Kalael hoisted him onto their shoulders. They were all shouting his name, ‘Dante! Dante!’ But he took no joy in their victory.

  His eyes remained locked on the dead.

  No victory was worth this price.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE PLACE OF CHALLENGE

  456.M40

  The Place of Challenge

  Baal Secundus

  Baal System

  Nine days of recuperation, fasting and meditation followed the Trial of War, all undertaken in isolation, before the last aspirants were gathered together for the Final Choosing. One hundred and eight had gone into the Trial of War. Seventy-two remained. Tension was heavy around these boys who had been asked to kill each other and now had to meekly wait side by side. Triumph among the victors had given way to introspection. Luis was glad he could not see the faces of the Blood Angels beneath their helmets. If he saw looks of pleasure or of pride, he thought he could not stand it. Always they had been angels to him, protectors of Baal, the pinnacle of human development. The trial had been a hard reminder of their full name.

  The great door of the keep opened, revealing a vestibule walled by another large gate. A smaller door was open within the second gate. Luis could see little beyond it, and the keep remained mysterious.

  The Blood Angels came and went into the group, silently and solemnly touching boys on the arm and beckoning for them to follow. He had no reason to expect the Space Marines would take pleasure in the killing, but the suspicion was bad enough. He sat on the sand in front of the angels’ keep, his arms locked around his knees, the faces of the boys whose deaths he had been responsible for drifting across his vision. They weren’t raiders, or people he had to kill; they were people he knew, killed because they were in the way of his personal desire. He could pretend he did it in order to serve the Emperor, but in reality they were dead because he wanted to be a Blood Angel. They were Barrazael, Garviel, Darrevael, Cosimo, Ludovic and others dead by his hand or by his orders, which was just as bad. And now they were nothing.

  He burrowed his face deeper between his knees as their names echoed around his head.

  One after another the boys were taken from the group and led through the great door into the angels’ keep. No indication was given if the aspirants taken within were chosen or not. Luis supposed he would not see some of them ever again. They were told to be silent, to make no farewells. The unfairness of that chafed at Luis as his friends were stripped away. Ristan went first. Lorenz was called an hour later. He stood and strode out without looking back. A few went hesitantly. Florian followed Lorenz’s example until he reached the door. He smiled sadly back at Luis, and lingered so long Araezon took his arm and led him within.

  Luis’ turn was a long time coming. Name after name was called. The group dwindled. The aspirants were blank-faced, burned out with exhaustion and dogged by trauma. Maybe this would be the final hurdle he would fall at. Not cruel enough to bear the murder of his comrades easily, he would be driven out.

  He would not be sorry if that were so. He could not fight for monsters. Shadows lengthened. The light inside the keep did not have to fight so hard against the sun, and the room inside revealed itself by degree. He saw only white walls. Baal was coming up. Perhaps this was the last time he would see it. The moon’s presence calmed him, and by the time he was finally called, when eight boys remained, he rose up by Malafael and walked into the keep w
ith a steady heart. The Chaplain went behind him, leaving Luis painfully aware that the black angel could destroy him without difficulty. Still, he made himself stop, and the Chaplain halted behind him. He craned his neck to see past the looming, skull-encrusted majesty of the Chaplain – one last glimpse at the heavens before he entered an unfamiliar world. Baal filled the circular patch of sky over the Place of Challenge. At the fullest part of its waist gleamed the fortress-monastery of the Blood Angels. In moments, he would know if he was to go to dwell there, or remain on Baal Secundus forever.

  Malafael pushed him inside.

  The barracks and fortifications of the Place of Challenge were built of mud-brick and stone. They were the same as all the other buildings Luis had been inside: small windows to keep out the heat and dust, hot and dusty just the same.

  The keep was different, as finely made as the building they had been taken into at the Place of Choosing, from the marvellous seamless stone of the Imperium. Harsh, artificial light glared from strip lumens. A strange taste filled his mouth, and the machines that infested the keep’s innards buzzed annoyingly.

  Malafael took him to another door leading deeper into the keep. The temperature dropped, and Luis shivered.

  ‘I believe this is yours,’ said Malafael. He took a staff from an attendant blood thrall and handed it to Luis.

  The wood was remarkably familiar, rough towards the end, smooth where his hands had polished the grain away.

  ‘This is my staff!’ he exclaimed. ‘How? I left it behind. This is impossible!’

  ‘You will learn that many things are possible,’ said Malafael. ‘Does it not please you to have it back?’

  Luis weighed it in his hands. It was undeniably his lost staff. It occurred to him then that they had been watching him all along.

  ‘May I keep it?’ he asked.

  ‘If you wish,’ said Malafael. ‘Though you may be about to die. I gave it to you because I thought you might wish for a familiar weapon.’

  The toothed doors slid apart.

  ‘A weapon?’ said Luis.

  ‘One last test awaits.’ Malafael directed Luis into the next room. It was much larger than the others and lit with a deep red light. Aside from a few unadorned conduits, the rockcrete was bare. In the middle of the floor stood Florian, staff up and ready to fight. His teeth were gritted, all his muscles tense.

  Luis’ heart fell. ‘Florian?’

  Florian’s fierce expression flickered from anguish to determination and back.

  ‘I’m sorry. They said I had to fight you for my chance.’

  ‘What is this?’ demanded Luis.

  ‘Your final test,’ said Malafael in his grating, machine-modulated voice. ‘I would give you a speech to set you on your way, but I’ll wager you are tired of those after these long weeks. Your friend has it right. You must kill him, or he you. One and only one place on Baal is at stake here. What are you waiting for?’ said Malafael to Luis. His voice took on a fierce goading edge. ‘Only one stands in your way! Kill your opponent and earn the freedom of the skies!’

  ‘Kill him?’ said Luis weakly.

  ‘You are to become a warrior, are you not?’

  Both of them hesitated. Florian, close to tears, gave in first.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and drove at Luis with his staff with a cry halfway between a battle-shout and a scream of despair.

  Luis shifted back to evade the blow. The staff hummed past his face, the violence of it hot in the air.

  He pivoted and met Florian’s staff with his own. They clacked sharply. They moved together, intimate as dancers, the ends of their staffs rattling off each other in a frenzied percussion to their steps.

  Luis cracked Florian’s shin. The other boy suppressed a cry and smashed back so hard his staff burst through Luis’ defence and knocked him on the forehead. The blow was comparatively light, but Luis saw stars. He staggered back, bringing up his weapon in time to deflect Florian’s other blows. Florian had expended a lot of energy quickly, knowing he had to overpower Luis. It was never going to work. Luis had become by far the better fighter.

  Florian’s blocks grew wilder. The opening was there. Luis took it. He ran his staff up the inside of Florian’s as hard as he could, crashing it into his wrist. With a high yelp, Florian released his weapon from his injured hand. Luis whirled around, stepping out from Florian and letting his hands slide to the end of the staff. Florian’s one-handed parry was clumsy. Luis’ staff hit Florian’s elbow. The sound of the bone breaking was similar to the knock of the wood on wood.

  Florian went pale with agony and stumbled, his staff falling from his fingers. Luis drove his weapon into Florian’s face, breaking his black teeth, then spun it around to bring the other end hard into his sternum. The air whooshed from Florian’s lungs in a spray of bloody spittle. He stumbled forwards, mouth gaping for air that he could not draw into his body.

  Luis circled his friend. Florian was on his knees coughing a stream of bloody saliva, and cradling his broken elbow.

  ‘Now finish him!’ urged Malafael savagely.

  Luis’ hands tightened on his staff. A few blows, then over. He would win. He would have everything he had striven for. He would be an angel, able to do so much, to serve the Emperor. He would be a hero. His father would be wrong.

  What kind of hero kills his friend?

  ‘Why are you hesitating?’ roared Malafael. ‘Your position in the Chapter hangs in the balance! Strike!’

  Luis looked at the wood, the gift from his mother. Suddenly it felt unclean in his hands, tainted by his consideration of the Chaplain’s demand.

  ‘I will not slay him,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked the Chaplain.

  ‘I said I would not slay him!’ Luis shouted in sudden fury.

  ‘You would throw away your chance to become a servant of the Emperor, a Space Marine, one of the greatest warriors in the galaxy for the sake of him?’ scoffed the Chaplain. ‘You are a fool, and not worthy of the gifts we would bestow. Kill him!’

  ‘No.’ Luis cast his staff away. It clattered into the corner. He stood tall. ‘For him I would abandon anything. He helped me when I needed help. He befriended me when I had no friends. He guided me when he could have left me. I will not repay his kindness with treachery. If that means I am not worthy, I do not care. Kill me. I will not serve masters who demand the blood of my brother.’

  Malafael leaned closer. Luis took a step back from his grinning skull face. ‘What of glory and of power?’ he whispered, his voice hissing through the vox-grille. ‘Surely a fair price for such things is one life?’

  ‘I did not come here for glory or for power. I came to serve,’ said Luis calmly. He felt cheated, after everything he had undergone, all he had suffered, all he had hoped. He was angriest most of all at himself, for he had been a whisker away from spilling his friend’s brains upon the floor for his own gain. He hid it all and faced his death with dignity. ‘I will have no part of evil.’

  The Chaplain’s posture changed. He rested his weapon’s head upon the floor and crossed his hands upon its pommel.

  ‘Then you have passed.’

  ‘What?’ said Luis. Florian looked up dazedly.

  ‘There are many tests in the Final Choosing, for each aspirant is different. This one was selected for you. Among ourselves we call this the Test of Horus. Do you know why? Do you know who Horus was?’

  ‘He was a devil, a monster who fought the Emperor for control of the heavens,’ said Luis.

  ‘You are almost correct. Aeons ago, there was a great war, where angel fought against angel. Our lord Sanguinius was but one of twenty sons of the Emperor. These warriors were invested with the powers of ancient technology and prosecuted a Great Crusade, reuniting the worlds of humanity for the first time in thousands of years. But the favoured son of the Emperor, the Warmaster Horus, grew bitter and turned on his father, destroying the work of the Emperor ere it had been completed. Half of his brothers j
oined him in treachery. Our lord did not, but stood to the end against Horus, whom he had once loved. This test is named for him because it is a test of loyalty and brotherhood. We wish to see how well your principles endure when you are ordered by a mightier being to commit atrocity, and you held fast to your morals.’

  Luis was aghast. ‘But… But, the Trial of Blood. That is the same. You told us to kill, and we killed. Here you ask me to kill, and hope I do not. Are you hypocrites as well as torturers?’

  ‘You ask questions now, defiant ones at that,’ said Malafael after a moment’s pause. ‘You are unusual. I should cast you out for your impudence, Luis Dante.’ He stared down. ‘But something stays me, and I will answer your question. On occasion, as a brother of the Blood Angels, you will have to do things that might otherwise appal you. This test is a measure of your moral compass. Will it always point true to the ideals of our lord, or can it be wavered? There are lines, boy, that should never be crossed. To kill rebellious soldiers who fight because they have no choice is a regrettable evil that should tear at you if you are ever required to do it. The slaughter of the innocent to stop the machinations of the guilty must sometimes be undertaken. But to revel in slaughter for slaughter’s sake is forbidden, and to turn upon a brother for personal glory or gain is the first step on the path to damnation. Temptation, above all else, is the hardest test for a Space Marine to bear. Offered such great power, what man would not waver in his devotion to the true Lord of Mankind. Do you see?’

  Luis looked down at Florian. Emotions of the most powerful sort warred in him.

  ‘You seem to be an intelligent boy. You will therefore have noticed we did not split the groups you had formed yourselves,’ explained the Chaplain. ‘We asked you to fight against those who you had but fleeting loyalty to, not against those whom you held in genuine affection. You must forgive us for the artifice of these tests.’ A note of regret crept into Malafael’s voice. ‘If this universe were fairer, then such cruelty would be unnecessary, but believe me when I say the universe you shall discover is not fair, and it is not kind. These petty horrors help humanity, in the end.’