Dante

by Guy Haley

  Atmospheric re-entry began with a quiet rumble, and built quickly to a roaring that transcended all noise Luis had heard before. The ship’s internal temperature rose rapidly. It bounced with such violence Luis thought the craft would land and open to reveal the shaken-apart remains of the new recruits. He screwed his eyes closed, teeth gritted, praying to the Emperor and Sanguinius for salvation.

  As soon as it started, it was done. The Thunderhawk levelled out. Whining noises came from outside, and the engine sound changed. The Space Marines’ boots clunked as they disengaged, and they walked forwards to the massive assault ramp.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said Malafael. At least, that’s what Luis thought he said; his ears were screeching from the punishment meted out to his hearing.

  They were over another world, flying down to Baal itself. Luis yearned to see, but the ship’s armour permitted no windows other than the canopy over the cockpit. To the fore of the cabin a grainy flat pict screen blinked into life, too small for him to see much detail, but he caught a view of dunes rushing past before Malafael leaned in close to it and obscured it completely.

  The Thunderhawk slowed and banked around. Mechanisms whined within its metal skin. Three closely spaced clanks banged sharply through the deck.

  ‘We arrive,’ said Malafael. ‘Prepare yourselves. This is your last day as mortals.’

  True to its name, the ship emitted a riotous thunder of engine noise and slowed further. There was a series of delicate shifts, then a soft bang as it touched down and sank into its landing hydraulics. The engines screamed higher, then spooled down and shut off.

  ‘Stand!’ commanded Malafael in the sudden quiet. The restraint cages disengaged and lifted up. The boys rose stiffly. Luis felt heavier than he had on Baalfora, feeble even. Moving was an effort, though again the Blood Angels behaved as if nothing had changed. Rugon punched a massive red button on the wall, and the ship’s front ramp whirred down, letting in a soft light.

  ‘Exit the craft, and see your new home.’

  Luis exited into a plain hangar that stretched away out of sight, full of ships bristling with weapons. The air was cool and smelt of oils, and he shivered. Again he was subjected to terrifying noise as the other ships landed and the rest of the aspirants came out of their craft, blinking dazedly. Laestides and Araezon herded them together under Verono’s stern gaze.

  In the centre of the hangar, back from the landing pads, forty-five Space Marines waited for them, stood in smart ranks, each warrior’s armour different in its exquisite decoration.

  ‘Our brothers come to meet you, five from each company, save the tenth,’ said Rugon. ‘Come, you have laboured long. There will be no more delay. Your elevation to an adept of the stars begins now.’

  The Space Marines turned, marching into two long files with a space between them. Malafael directed the aspirants into the gap. Luis glanced nervously at the giants. They formed two walls like waves of blood. He couldn’t see how he would ever be able to call these demigods brother.

  ‘We go!’ said Verono.

  The Space Marines marched.

  A confusion of sights greeted Luis. The aspirants were led down staircases from the hangars. These were immense in size and highly ornate, their balustrades mounted with decorated metal lamps of complicated, exquisite design. Their walls made curving friezes of the Blood Angels at war, carved from the living rock. The width of the stairs was enough to accommodate the whole party with ease.

  They passed into a huge space, open to the sky. Luis gaped at it, breathing alien air for the first time. The heavens of Baal were a similar blue to home, but tinted with a delicate yellow. The courtyard, although the name barely did it justice, was bounded on all sides by walls higher than cliffs. Statues of angels hundreds of feet tall played host to bastions bristling with weapons. Around their feet were many tiers of stepped fields, green with growing things. The weighty smell of rich soils came off them. A high tower reached arrogantly for space on one side. Servitors clumped about, tending to the plants. Brothers in blood-red day robes stopped to watch the new recruits being marched by, hiding their faces in their hoods. The courtyard was a mile wide at least. The figures on the far side of its worn, hexagonal flagstones were tiny against the monumental effigies defending it, like salt ants infesting a roamer.

  They were over the courtyard quickly, the Space Marines setting a fast pace, and taken onto another stair that led upwards again. A vaulted hall of black stone opened up. The far side was a bank of enormous windows. The middle panes were clear, and outside Luis saw a landscape of dunes that faded into the dusty yellow sky, already tinting pink as the red sun of Baal neared the end of its path. The panes around the window edges were stained and assembled into images of Sanguinius. Sanguinius was everywhere, looking down from niches, held aloft in flight by cunningly wrought pillars of rock, standing with his sword held high and wings spread. He was depicted at peace, at war, in flight, at his crafts, raising up the tribes of the Blood, but whatever he was doing, his expression was tinged with an ineffable sorrow that pierced Luis’ soul.

  No explanation was given to the purposes of the rooms and spaces they were taken through. They went across the aisle of a huge hall. Luis caught a glimpse of a giant statue of Sanguinius made of gold. He was unarmoured, his weapons sheathed, his wings furled. He was looking down, his right hand out and open, blessing his children.

  Like all the other wondrous sights, it went by, replaced by more and more. A black iron gate was drawn back. The Space Marines formed two lines either side of it. The aspirants were taken inside a small chapel. A single light shaft pierced the thick outer walls of the fortress-monastery. A rose window was at the far end, thirty yards away. The walls were carved from the black stone and inlaid with precious minerals. Space Marine armour was rendered in deep red carnelian; eye-lenses were emeralds. Gold and silver adorned everything. The aspirants had never seen such riches and skill on display. Everything about the monastery seemed designed to cow them, and although they were the best either moon had to offer, they were afraid.

  ‘This is the Chapel of Vigilance in the Basilica Sanguinarum,’ said Malafael. ‘In here you will meditate for three days and three nights. Think upon your fate. Draw inspiration from the artworks around you.’ He held up his hand. ‘But you may not move from your position, you may not speak, and you must not sleep. Any aspirant who fails this test will be removed. Do I make myself clear?’

  The aspirants were too wise to speak, but Luis’ chest clenched. How many more tests must they undergo? He was already weary from the trials and his journeys. Such a vigil would be all too easy to fail.

  ‘There is one final test after this. Be assured your trials are nearly over,’ said Malafael, anticipating the aspirants’ fears. ‘First, you will eat, and you may see to your ablutions. You will be given robes fit for your vigil. Ready yourselves, and be warned – many fail here at the Winnowing of Weariness.’

  Three times the sun arced through the heavens, its shaft of light moving like a searchbeam over the polished black floor of the Chapel of Vigilance. The aspirants, dressed in simple shifts of pure white, were untroubled by the lack of food and water. All of them had experienced worse privation in their lives. Sleep was another matter. It beckoned them all. The final weeks of the challenge had been hard, and they were exhausted before they arrived upon Baal.

  Luis compensated through meditation, focusing his attention on detail as he had on the Thunderhawk. But fear is easier to banish than sleep, and he sank into a deep pit of tiredness he could not escape. At the end of the second day he felt better than expected, but come morning of the third day he was beyond tired. From the corner of his eyes he saw black shapes skittering across the floor, running like vermin over the limbs of his fellow aspirants. The youths sat cross-legged in rows, facing towards the rose window at the top of its deep shaft. Luis let it captivate him. How strange the light was there, and how different the air to breathe. There was no glass in the window’s elegant
traceries, and the scents of this alien world were free to blow in and beguile him. Dust and more dust, the dryness of it less than the extremes of the Great Salt Waste, but deeper somehow. Baal had never known oceans. Its aridity was inherent.

  Incense wafted in through the open ironwork of the chapel gate. Two sentries in full plate remained at guard there. Every five hours or so, the Space Marines gathered for convocation in the basilica. He could understand little of what they said, for the native speech of Baal’s moons had diverged from the High Gothic, but he caught enough to be surprised at what he heard. What he took for sermons were not. The Chaplains exhorted their brothers to deep thought, and restraint against thirst, and considered action. Though they asked for His guidance, they did not praise the Emperor as a god, but spoke to Him as a leader, and when they turned to Sanguinius, it was not as a saint but as a much-missed father. Services came and went through the vigil, setting a rhythm that would later dictate the days of Luis’ life forever.

  By the end of the third day, he could barely keep his head up. Aspirants began to fall asleep. It had seemed until that point that all of them would pass the test, but once one drifted away, others followed. As each one fell asleep, whether they toppled from their sitting position or their heads drooped to their chests, they were dragged out by the sentries. They awoke, and pleaded to be given another chance. One tried to fight against the hands pulling him from his fellows, and screamed out his anguish. The Blood Angels were unmoved, and took him away with the rest. The boys were never seen again. Not until years later did Luis learn their fate.

  The booming voices of the Chaplains and the beautiful hymns of the brothers seemed not to cease now with the close of each service, but continue on, becoming ever more elaborate. Such sweet music filled Luis’ ears that he began to cry. Despite the tears brimming in his eyes, they were intolerably dry and scratchy. They gained weight, until they seemed to be shutters of lead that had to be bodily held up, and he was so tired, and the muscles that held them back so puny. His limbs hurt from inactivity. His circulation was pinched off and his feet cold from the stone. His fingers twitched, and an unpleasant tingling troubled his nerves.

  He felt light, lighter than he had in the void. His spirit seemed tethered to his body by the weakest tissue, and threatened to tear free at any moment. His head nodded, and the gathering disassociation of sleep poured into his mind, thick as mud under crack salt. The chapel retreated. The sense of his corporeal being dissolved. Images whirled through his consciousness, so lucid that he mistook them for reality. He was back on Baal Secundus. His father and mother looked at him, the wind tugging at their clothes.

  ‘Father!’ he said. His father stared back at him angrily, his arm tightening around his wife’s shoulders. Luis’ mother smiled and nodded encouragingly.

  ‘You are an angel, my son,’ she said, though her lips did not move. ‘Spread your wings and fly.’

  There was a flash of light on golden armour in the sky behind her.

  The music swelled and swelled, the sound of the heavens. Surely the voice of the Emperor could not be so sweet.

  A hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked fully awake again. He had failed, he was sure. But instead of the red-armoured sentries, the golden angel was in front of him. He filled the room with his presence, but no other saw him. The golden angel shook his head and rested a hard armoured hand on his shoulder. Strength flowed from it into Luis. He smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Aspirant,’ said a gruff, vox-moderated voice.

  Luis blinked in confusion. The golden angel was gone. An angel of death stood in his place, his helm a grinning, bone-white death’s head.

  ‘The vigil is over,’ said Malafael. ‘Get up, Luis Dante.’

  Around him dazed boys were being helped to their feet by blood thralls. Sanguinary Priests stood about the room overseeing their efforts. A number of boys had gone.

  ‘Fifty-seven of you remain,’ said Malafael. ‘It is time. The Ritual of Insanginuation begins.’

  At the centre of a chanting procession they were taken through the cathedral. Luis walked light-headed. The world had taken on an unreal cast. The statues of angels had become living creatures trapped in stone that moved with liquid menace, threatening to break free from their imprisonment at any moment. The green eye-lenses of his potential brothers hid secrets he no longer wished to share. He could not understand the words the Blood Angels sang. The incense fumes stung his eyes and hurt his throat. He swayed on his feet, pins and needles raging through his limbs. Firm hands steadied him. He looked up to meet the fanatical eyes of a blood thrall. He sang into Luis’ face, his breath cloyed with wine and spices. Lorenz walked by him stiffly, his reddened eyes directed ahead. Two gateways of black stone, barely distinguishable from the carved walls, creaked open. Lines of power-armoured warriors marched from both, joining the throng. The Chaplains were shouting, the Sanguinary Priests too. Warriors touched his shoulder. Blood thralls held him up. They were singing, all of them, joyful songs that promised battle.

  The assembly gathered around the statue of Sanguinius. The primarch’s sorrowful face swam in and out of focus.

  Rugon and Araezon were there among other Sanguinary Priests. They ascended part way up steps leading to a great altar at Sanguinius’ feet. They gathered around one of their number whose armour was more heavily modified than the other priests. The blood thralls fussed over the right arms of the priests, removing armour plates to expose smooth, flawless skin. Blue veins pulsed under its translucent perfection. The blood-hued crags of armoured Space Marines crowded the aspirants, jostling each other, seemingly without the controlled order they had previously exhibited.

  A bell tolled. The assembly fell silent, and the High Priest spoke.

  ‘Aspirants, I am Dereveo, Sanguinary High Priest of the Blood Angels. This is the last of your tests. Soon you will sleep. If you awaken, you will be of our number. It is time for you to look upon the faces of those you would call brother.’

  The Space Marines reached up to their helmets. Helmet seals hissed as they were disengaged, so insistent and disorienting Luis woozily expected a plague of serpents to crawl over his feet. Beneath every war mask was a face of unbelievable beauty, so similar to the visage of holy Sanguinius that they could have been blood relatives. He looked around himself. More perfect faces emerged. Some were older than others in a way that was hard to define. The perfection of some was marred by injury, but under the marks of war and the years all shared a look. They were brothers in more than name.

  Dereveo was older than some; his golden hair had turned silver, and was worn unusually long. He smiled at the recruits. His teeth were even and white. His eye teeth were unnaturally long: a predator’s fangs.

  ‘To be a Blood Angel is to embrace blood and death. To be a Blood Angel is to thirst for blood and death.’

  A pair of blood thralls brought forwards a wooden reliquary. From this, Dereveo took out a huge cup, its bowl cast from gold in the semblance of a skull. He handled it reverently and lifted it above his head.

  ‘This is the Red Grail. In this vessel, the blood of the lord Sanguinius was caught.’ He lowered it. A circle of Sanguinary Priests crowded around the cup and extended their right forearms. Each produced a tiny, razor-sharp knife, and opened an artery. Blood splashed into the bowl in spurting starts, before their enhanced bodies quickly staunched the flow.

  ‘Always we have used the blood of our father to activate the sacred gene-seed you will soon be implanted with. After our father was murdered at the hands of the arch-traitor, his blood was taken from this cup and injected into the veins of our Sanguinary Priests. Each one of us entrusted with this most holy duty is a living host for the blood and spirit of our gene-lord.’

  A second circle of priests crowded the cup. They too slit their wrists and allowed their life fluid to patter into the grail. The hot, coppery smell of blood was everywhere. The Blood Angels changed upon experiencing the scent, morphing from ang
els to monsters. Though their faces remained perfect, their eyes dilated, their skin reddened and their fangs grew longer, extruding from gums and pricking at lower lips.

  ‘Each one of you will be invested with the gifts of the change, granted to this Chapter by the Emperor Himself in ages past. You will be infused with the blood of Sanguinius, and his seed will take root in your organs and alter you, making you more than a man.’

  The third and final group of Sanguinary Priests added their vitae to the cup. Dereveo took a tiny crystal phial from a cushion held by a thrall and opened it. He let a single drop of clear liquid fall into the blood. He stoppered the phial. The blood smoked.

  ‘First, you shall drink, and by this act take your first step to becoming a champion of the Emperor of Mankind.’

  A boy was grabbed by a Blood Angel whose face had twisted into that of a grinning fiend. He was half coaxed, half dragged to the steps. The grail was lowered to his lips.

  ‘Drink! Drink and know the last satisfying of your thirst,’ commanded Dereveo. ‘From this day forth, it shall never be slaked.’

  The boy took a sip, and spluttered. More blood was forced down his throat. He came away gasping, his lips coated red.

  ‘More! Bring them all!’ commanded Dereveo. The Blood Angels shouted out encouragement rowdily. Their civilised airs were torn away.

  Luis took the blood like all the rest. It slid down his throat, sensuously thick but repellent. When it hit his stomach it curdled, and he feared he would vomit up the sacred life-stuff of the Great Angel. His vision, already made hyper-real by sleeplessness, distorted further. A red stain tinted his sight. He gasped, and a trickle of blood dribbled from his mouth onto his chin. He wiped it off, smearing the sleeves of his robe.

  ‘The change will be upon you. Some of you will not be able to withstand it, and will die.’ The High Priest’s voice slowed. ‘Those that live will experience a life of war!’