Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion

by Chris Wraight

  The Adeptus Custodes had issued to war, and the Throneworld reeled now under the massed tread of its most potent sons. The tide of crimson met the flood of gold, and the screams of the dissipated became truly frenzied. The twin armies smashed into a tangled contact, a serried wave of impacts that cracked the rockcrete and threw the blood-rain into whirling vortices.

  I fought on, driving myself ever harder, feeling an inexplicable joy well up through my speed-smeared limbs even as I rent and tore and hacked and gouged.

  I could have cried out loud. I could have lost myself in the moment, for amid the carnage had come a sight from the lost aeons, a fragment of our glorious past made real once more. The Captain-General was there, slaying in majesty. The Ten Thousand were unleashed, pouring their slow-burning fury onto the only enemy that had ever truly mattered.

  We had returned.

  Aleya

  The fight that day was vile and grim and I hated it.

  Remember this – we were immune to the psychic dread cast by the shedim. We did not see them as fearsome or dreadful, just execrable and never-ending, like a continent of vicious slake-worms. The entire scene before us was a pall of sludge, kicked up in dirt, caked in blood and sluiced in a deluge of toxins.

  Valerian remembers it differently, of course. All those others who were present remember it differently to us. There’s a philosophical question to be asked here, I suppose – which of us saw things truly? You could try to answer that if you really wanted, but you’d soon be caught up in the kind of tedious theological discussion that the Custodians delight in when they’re not lopping the heads off threats to the Throne.

  We never saw the roaring curtains of warpfire, and we never saw the leering faces in the dark. The earth did not glow like magma, it was a stinking mass of rotten asphalt and broken rockcrete. Terra, much to my disappointment, was not a scintillating world of spires and turrets, but a colossally foul sink of dilapidation.

  We only had moments to take this in, however. Our lander must have malfunctioned on the way down, or perhaps had been hit by something, for we crashed to earth on the extreme right flank of the erupting melee. As I charged down the ramp I could see a swamp of black and grey glistening ahead of me, and daemons squirming like insects in spoil.

  As I have already noted, Navradaran was not a fool. He had dispatched the majority of the landers closer in towards the wall, where they slammed down just ahead of the advancing lines of Custodians. Those of my sisters who had been brought back to Terra in the months past no doubt marched with them too, interlocking their unique capabilities with those of their counterparts.

  That was the very essence of it, you see. That was why the past centuries had been such a miserable mistake. We had been made to fight alongside one another, two halves of a greater whole. The Custodians were individually the finest warriors ever created, but they were not themselves gifted with psychic mastery, and nor could they dissipate the auras of destruction created by the shedim. That was our task. We had always gone into battle alongside them, draining the most potent aspect of our enemy from them, reducing them to the purely physical. I had heard it said that there was nothing purely physical that a Custodian could not kill, and so we complemented one another perfectly.

  Later, when I learned more of their ways and had to listen to them tell me over and over again how much they carried the guilt of the past on their shoulders, I wondered if our own role might have been deliberately suppressed. Perhaps it was easier for them to retreat into the Palace while we withered away in the void, ­erasing the old patterns so they’d never have to be reminded how we used to wage war.

  I don’t really think that’s what happened. Bitterness can give you strange ideas, though.

  Right then, of course, I had no time to speculate about anything. We were far from any kind of support, lost amid the seething morass of hateful and dangerous shedim. We were hardly defenceless, but there were only five of us and our lander’s bolter-feed would soon run out of shells.

  I had to make a decision quickly. I looked at the walls – too far away, despite the advancing lines of defenders. I looked out at the city behind us – just as distant, and aside from some cover, lacking any advantage. I looked towards the centre of the battlefield – an absolute pit of horror, presided over by eight massive shaitainn with their bunched arms, withered wings and dripping black horns.

  I might have laughed at the pointlessness of it, had I not caught a flash of silver, followed by a briefer flash of gold, more than two hundred metres away through a forest of clutching daemonkind but obviously still fighting.

  That was it. That was our best chance of surviving more than a few seconds. I signalled to my sisters, some of whom had seen the same opportunity. We charged into contact, slamming into the oncoming tide of greasy shedim, hurling our greatblades around us in withering arcs.

  Throne, but it was terrible fighting. We blunted the worst of their soul-cracking aura, but that still left creatures of iron-bound sinew and steel-pinned teeth. They carried their own crude blades forged from blunt iron, and every time I countered their blows I felt my bones jar.

  This was not the task we had been made for. We were witch-hunters, seekers of shadows, fast-moving and lightly armoured. One-on-one we could slaughter these things, but the numbers would get to us eventually.

  My blade churned faster, desperately, propelled now two-handed. We formed into a tight knot, fighting back-to-back and pushing as fast as we dared across the open terrain.

  They hated us, those things. They hated us even more than the Custodians who so brutally carved them apart, because all the shedim could do was kill our bodies, and that had no appeal for creatures nourished by the torture of souls. I think we horrified them more than anything else. I think we drew more than our share towards us, and that just made me angrier the longer we were out there.

  I felt slime splatter across my exposed forehead, and it sizzled acidly on my skin. A cleaver snagged on my calf, biting through my armour nearly down to the flesh. My cloak was ripped into tatters, my breastplate smacked by a blow that nearly upended me.

  Sister Jeranda was the first to be killed, bringing up our rear. I didn’t see it happen but I heard the anguished scream. I finished off the mess of slime and scales that was going for my throat before I could turn to see them drag her into their midst and begin the feast.

  We couldn’t reach her. I felt my vision go black. I felt my fury roar out of me, spiralling and augmenting.

  In another age, I might have cried out that fury, but I still had my vow, so redoubled the savagery of my assault. I ripped out teeth, I broke backs, I stripped the skin from their bones and flung the carcasses aside. We all did the same, fighting in a way that could not last, for we were mortal after all, and those we cut into could do this forever.

  But we did enough. We broke fast through the horde, shriving them of their greatest gifts and finishing the task with our greatblades. Soon I could see the object of our endeavours, fighting just ahead of us. I saw the aura of gold and the flash of hard silver light, and knew that we would come among them soon.

  Even our proximity aided them. I saw them kill more swiftly and more surely, and saw the daemons fall back before their onslaught. The Custodian was ploughing through them now, throwing shedim aside in great haymaking thrusts of his guardian spear. Those with him – Adeptus Astartes in archaic plate of silver-grey – blasted them into shrivelled ash. I began to see a way for us to survive this – together, fighting hard to link up with the huge counter-attack even now surging down from the walls.

  Then the shadow fell across us all, huge and repulsive. I looked up, and suddenly survival looked a very distant prospect indeed.

  Valerian

  In truth, I never saw Aleya fight her way towards me until she was virtually among us. She finds this extremely irritating, though I have since learned that Aleya is angered by all manner of s
trange things. If I had detected her earlier, it might have changed our strategy, since I became aware in those few moments just what a critical advantage it was to have the Sisters fighting with us.

  Valoris was, as ever, prescient in this. Alone of the High Lords he had anticipated the need to restore the structures of the past, and alone of the High Lords he had no prejudice against the non-soulled. The records will tell a different tale, I suspect. They will announce that the Fenris disaster prompted the Council to act, and this version will reflect glory on the mortal masters of the Imperium. Though the story has some truth to it – the later order originated, I understand, from the same Chancellor Tieron whom I met myself – anyone who understands the vast distances they had to cover and the nature of the warp will know that the programme must have been enacted many months, maybe even years, before that command was given.

  In all that followed, I remain struck by how instantly we slotted back into those ancient modes of combat. We needed no exhaustive instruction, but fell into our roles instinctively. They are formidable fighters, the Sisters. I have nothing but respect for the physical prowess they display, although that is not their primary function on the battlefield. They position themselves in the greatest danger by doing what they do – they are more lightly armoured than we, and attract the larger share of animus from the creatures of the warp.

  As for ourselves, we had never lost the ability to converse in fluent Thoughtmark. It was one of the martial disciplines we had maintained over the many millennia, and on that day our prudence was rewarded. Those who marched with the Captain-General from the Lion’s Gate were able to do so in perfect concert, and even for those of us sundered from the main host by circumstance, such as Aleya and myself, our combined methods of controlled violence proved instantly effective.

  It was less easy for Alcuin and his battle-brothers. They were all psykers of the most acute kind, and their every waking movement was animated by the warp. For them, the ether and the materium were intrinsically linked, two sides of the same blade that they balanced on effortlessly, and they were accustomed to fighting with the two worlds enmeshed. Even their armour is psy-enhanced, augmenting the cruder biological links used by their counterparts in other Chapters. The arrival of Aleya and her sisters restricted what they could do, and reduced them to fighting as solely physical warriors.

  In the circumstances, however, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. The Grey Knights, even stripped of the bulk of their psychic expertise, were still among the finest fighters I have ever encountered, and they adjusted to the new situation with uncomplaining precision. Robbing the daemons of their most dreadful powers was worth the fractional reduction in my allies’ flexibility, and we all fought from then onwards as if facing beasts, rather than thought-monsters.

  Indeed, they yowled like beasts then, the daemonkind. Their exultation was torn from their jaws and their feral glee was replaced by a kind of outrage. They hated this. They hated being denuded of their own realm’s purest dimension and being forced to engage us on mortal terms.

  In the moments before I saw Aleya emerge, I do remember finding the fighting suddenly and inexplicably easier. We had pushed hard into that horde’s heart, aiming for the high stages of an old landing pad. Both Alcuin and I had seen the potential of it – a high raised platform, ringed by stairways, commanding a vantage over the eastern portion of the huge battlefield. If we could make that, I judged, it would serve two purposes – to give us higher ground to defend against the endless tide of the enemy, and to make us visible to Valoris’ forces advancing from the north. If we could endure long enough, inward teleportation or airdrop could secure the position, opening a second front against the enemy and dividing them.

  We had almost gained that location when the Sisters reached us. Even as I wondered why I was killing the daemonic horde with such fluency, I saw the woman I would later know as Tanau Aleya driving into them with all the fury of a baresark. She threw herself around in what I might have thought was reckless blood-mania, had it not been so bluntly effective. She did not engage the enemy so much as run through them. My first thought on witnessing such a style of combat was that she would soon exhaust herself, allowing the daemons to take advantage once she tired, but of course that was to miss the purpose of the single-minded charge – they had worked so hard in order to link with us, to form up into a combination that the Neverborn would find impossible to counter.

  After that we were fighting together, sliding in amongst one another, dancing and parrying and interweaving as if born to it. Alcuin’s squad must have found the Sisters uniquely unsettling, even painful, but in the thick of that combat they had no choice but to adapt. The ten of us formed into a tight circle of bodies, myself and the Grey Knights taking the brunt of the physical assault, the Sisters directing their null-effect from the shadow of our blades. Whenever one of us tired or made a mistake, another would leap into the breach. We left a trail of slaughter behind us, and finally gained the foot of the stairs. I looked up, expecting to see the platform rear above us, ready to plan our assault on the high position.

  Only then did I see what we had attracted, rushing across the fire-swept platform to meet us.

  Aleya calls such things by the ancient name, shaitainn. That captures the stature and the horror better than the Low Gothic, I think. It was truly gigantic, far greater than any foe I have engaged before or since. It reared high into the blood-rain storm, its wings lashing like the sails of some ancient galleon. Its cloven hooves sunk deep into the rockcrete with every step, breaking the earth into fresh plumes of flame. Its movements were horrific – bleeding with the same power a Titan has, but bound up in sinew and gristle and bone. Its axe alone was the size of a Dreadnought chassis, and as the blade whistled through the air it left a trail of fire in its wake.

  It crashed down onto the platform, threw its muscle-corded arms wide, and roared in challenge. The gale of that roar sent the lesser daemons flying into one another, and even we had to lean into that foul, spittle-flecked storm of meat-rotten breath.

  I could sense perversion radiating from its burning heart over the dampening aegis generated by the Sisters. It was like a furnace, a cauldron of boiling and uncontrollable rage. Something about it spoke of eternity, of its near-infinite malice dragged up from the deepest vortices of the hell-plane in which it was enthroned.

  I swung Gnosis round, its blade-edge crackling with disruptor energies.

  ‘This is His realm,’ I told it, calmly. ‘You feared it before. You will fear it again.’

  Then I was moving, vaulting up the stairs, generating the momentum I would need to counter the daemon’s incredible mass.

  None of my companions hesitated. They all came with me, racing up the stairs, their blades poised. Alcuin was at my left shoulder, crying out words of fell power and denunciation, his daemon-hammer now psychically inert but still physically powerful. His battle-brothers laid down a rain of shells from their wrist-mounted storm bolters. Aleya was at my right hand, her silence if anything more daunting, her eyes black with fury, and behind her came the others, running in lock-step, charging into the heart of darkness.

  As I reached the summit I leapt high, bracing my spear to meet the scything path of the great axe. The blades impacted – hell-wrought iron against Imperial steel – and the shock wave screamed out across the entire battle-plain. I crashed to the ground, thrown wide by the blow, only to be replaced by Alcuin who slammed his warhammer into the daemon’s leading greave. His battle-brothers threw themselves in close, hacking and thrusting with their great blades before pulling clear to send volleys of sanctified bolt-shells punching into its hide. The Sisters charged alongside them, cleaving at the daemonic flesh even as their aura swelled up to deaden its fearsome power.

  I raced into contact, only to see one of Alcuin’s warriors crushed by a single kick from the creature’s spiked hoof. It swung around again, vast and ponderous, slamming the a
xe-blade down where two Sisters were retreating. The iron head plunged deep into the earth, throwing both from their feet and sending burning cracks snaking across the platform.

  It was colossal, a soul-crucible fuelled by veins of molten lead and driven by a core of inextinguishable venom. Our blades barely scratched its flesh, our blows barely halted its heavy rampage. Every pendulous swing of that axe was more than lethal, unleashing forces capable of levelling whole fortresses and against which our armour was as potent as parchment. If we were to have any chance to end it we would need to dare the impossible.

  I sprinted harder, throwing myself high and reaching for the daemon’s brass-disc hauberk. I grasped on to its iron-studded belt with my left hand and plunged Gnosis with all my strength. The blade drove deep, causing a fountain of scorching blood to gush out, splashing against my visor and making me gag from the stench. The daemon bellowed and jerked around, trying to throw me loose, but I gripped tightly to both spear and buckle.

  I heard Alcuin cry out then as he smashed his warhammer into the beast, I caught a blurred glimpse of the Sisters racing to carve fresh wounds into its exposed flesh. I twisted Gnosis, trying to drive it under the creature’s immense ribcage and prise bone from sinew. Just at the last moment I saw it release one claw from the axe shaft, ready to seize me, and I yanked Gnosis free, dropping down beneath its twisting bulk and swerving from the outstretched talons.

  By then the lesser daemons had raced back after us, scrambling up the slope in a skittering wave of crimson flesh. Two of Alcuin’s warriors had to turn to hold them back at the head of the stairs, fighting furiously even as a Sister rushed to their aid, further diminishing our assault.