I looked up. Something vast was suspended above us, held tight by massive chains the diameter of Rhino transports. It was truly gigantic, a long shard of black stone that led right back into the heart of the ship, faceted like a crystal, humming and yanking against its bonds. At first I didn’t understand what it was, only that it was so big that half the entire cruiser must have been hollowed out in order to carry it.
Then I suddenly knew why I felt the way I did. Perhaps no other mortal would have experienced quite the same sensation, for that thing, that immense rod of dark stone, was the same as I was. It was a null. A blank. A sink and a dissipater of psychic force. I was a lone individual, capable of projecting my unique repellence only a few metres – this thing must have had the power to deny the warp over a vast range.
I didn’t fully understand what purpose that could serve, but I could begin to make a guess. This ship had come halfway across the galaxy bearing this null cargo, retrofitted purely in order to carry it, racing far ahead of the great armies of the Despoiler in order to bring it into position here. From the gap in the cruiser’s hull I could even see the carnage wrought below us on the planet’s surface – a vast scar cut into the pristine terrain, hundreds of square kilometres burned and secured in preparation for what was to come.
It would launch. The shard would be hurled down at the world below. And when it did, this system would go dark. Already I could sense an enormous build up of power around us, and saw red marker lights race down the long shaft to the aperture at the hull’s edge.
The chains! I signed, frantically, seeing that the great fixings where the shackles met the inner wall would soon blow, loosing the shard to plunge planetwards.
The concave surface of the shaft was riddled with stairways and access platforms, latticing the walls all the way up. Above us was the first of many anchor-points for the chains, swollen into a huge bulkhead that jutted far out into the emptiness. I raced up the nearest stairwell, a rust-thick ladder that wound its way up within a metal cage, Reva hard on my heels.
Just as I got close to the summit, the first bolter fire ricocheted in, smashing through the rotting steelwork and smacking hard into the wall sections beyond. More shots rained down, and I glimpsed legionnaires emerging from access points above us, below us, across the far side of the shaft. Motorised gantries began to creak across the gulf, ready to link the two sides up, and more kill-squads clattered across them, poised to throw themselves right into us.
I kept going, slipping and stumbling, my hands struggling to grip the rungs as the bolt-shells ripped past. We were horribly exposed, open to ranged fire, and once the gantries slammed home the enemy would be free to assault directly. There was almost no cover, just the webs of scaffolding and access ladders, which would do little against fury such as theirs.
I reached the bulkhead, hauled myself through a wide access port and heaved up onto its summit, a flat plane of weathered adamantium no more than ten metres across. Before me stood the chain’s anchorage, a swollen tangle of rockcrete the size of a Land Raider that pinned the first of those enormous great links to the inner wall of the shaft.
Reva emerged beside me, racing across to the bulkhead’s perimeter, firing all the time from her bolt pistol. I took the last of my melta charges and slammed them against the mooring’s bolt mechanism even as the warning klaxons sounded for its release.
Then I was hit on the shoulder, thrown to the floor and dragged along by the momentum. I had a brief impression of the whirling abyss below, and saw the bright disc of Vorlese blurry at the bottom of the shaft, before a firm gauntlet seized me and hauled me back. I found myself staring up at Valerian’s helm for a brief moment, then he vaulted past, firing bolts from his guardian spear and shielding me from further hits.
My melta charges blew in sequence, fusing the massive links to their housing in a sequential burst of roaring plasma. Runes flashing over the arcane machinery suddenly flicked to red, and the heavy chain went taut, kicking out sparks and shaking the entire bulkhead platform. By then others of us had made it to the same vantage, and we clustered there together, Custodians and Sisters alike, firing into the oncoming legionnaires and using what scant cover we could to shield ourselves from the storm of incoming shells.
From below, from where we had emerged, I heard the clang of fresh fighting breaking out – eight of my sisters and two of Valerian’s chamber had remained behind to hold the doorway, and now fought back desperately against the charge from the corridors beyond. More projectiles thudded into the metalwork around us, detonating in splinter-bursts and punching clouds of powderised rockcrete high into the air.
I crouched down, keeping my blade in one hand while I reached for my pistol. Valerian stood beside me then, his heavier armour absorbing hits that would have pulverised mine. Even as I opened fire I could hear the muffled cries of my sisters as they were cut down one by one, the only sound that had passed their lips since the Vow. I saw a Custodian hammered back by a whole welter of heavy impacts, his battleplate bludgeoned into bloody craters and his spear shattered.
The chain still held taut. For as long as we held that bulwark, the shard could not release. I watched the tortured links stretch and spark afresh, straining against the melted armature and opening cracks up in the rockcrete. The mooring locked fast. It would need to be cut loose at close range now before they could complete the launch, and our enemy knew it.
I pushed my back into the charred mass of melted ironwork, firing steadily at the legionnaires who trundled to engage us. We were sitting targets where we were, hemmed in against the bulkhead’s outcrop, our ammunition running down rapidly and our armour already dinked and scored. There were so many of them now, pouring out of every opening, their red lenses glowing amid dark helms, their cursed language echoing against the soaring adamantium walls.
The first of them reached the end of the looming gantries and leapt in among us. Valerian met him with his spear, slicing him almost clean in two then kicking him over the edge. More piled in after that, and I switched back to hauling my blade two-handed.
We were dying. There were fewer than twenty of us left by then, clustered around that burned-out mooring, our backs to one another and fighting hard. Dozens more legionnaires crashed down from the fully extended gantries, and beyond them came dozens more – the tide was never-ending, a storm surge that would overwhelm us sooner or later, no matter how many of them we slew first.
And then came the strangest thing of all. As I swung my greatblade to meet the next challenge, I heard Valerian chuckling softly. He had already dispatched another legionnaire and was wading straight into another. I had never heard him laugh before. Even as I locked blades with my own enemy, I found the whole thing strikingly surreal.
‘Hold fast, anathema,’ he told me, his spear whirling around him in those glorious golden parabolas. ‘This is where it ends. Let us make it a stand for the ages.’
He was elated. I could hear the battle-joy in his voice. Everything I had thought about him was wrong, it turned out – he was capable of moving beyond himself, of escaping that infernal tomb on Terra and becoming so much more.
This was a new age, I thought then. We had lived to see it dawn, and had fought for its survival. Death in that cause was not a tragedy; it was a privilege.
So I spoke. I did it. What use were vows then? They had never helped me before.
‘By His will alone,’ I said out loud, fighting hard, relishing my final words as they slipped from my lips.
Tieron
Let me tell you what manner of commander the Imperium now had.
The safest course of action, once we had burned through the warp into the Vorlese System, would have been to destroy the enemy fleet instantly. We had the guns for it, and we knew what its purpose was. As we emerged into orbit and saw that ruinous squadron at geostation over the cleared site below I fully expected the lances to be ignited.
> That’s not what he did, though.
‘If they live yet, they deserve more than martyrdom,’ he said, making ready to lead the first of many boarding parties into the grand cruiser.
And so he went into combat himself, a primarch leading his own force of Space Marines, the like and profile of which I had never seen before. Our battleships scattered the enemy escorts and zeroed their mighty cannons onto the main prize. Once the grand cruiser’s shields were crippled, hundreds of them teleported into contact, sweeping through that corrupt old hulk like a storm wind and scouring it down to the metal. Their orders were to seize the vessel and retrieve any of our own who still survived within it.
I understood then why so many would follow this leader. You may have heard of his reputation for calculation and cold strategic mastery, but that only tells part of the story. In an inhumane age, he reminded us of what we had lost.
I was permitted to take a shuttle over once the enemy ship had been secured and the worst of the fighting was done. I never wish to find myself in such a place again – every rivet of it was sickening, resonant with the same latent horror that the daemons had brought to us on Terra. I had to cover my mouth as I was escorted down through those dark, humid corridors, choosing not to look into the many chambers that we passed lest I see something that would turn my mind.
Guilliman wanted me to see the site of the final battle for myself. He wanted me to see the great shaft, and the remnants of that pylon hanging from its heavy chains, just so it would be clear how close we had come. Had the device been deployed, warp transit through the Vorlese node would have been impossible, crippling the crusade before it could have begun and delaying it for years.
At that stage we did not fully understand how they were able to do it, and the shard’s origins would only be discovered later. For aeons, it turned out, these objects had been embedded in the soils of Cadia, part of a poorly understood network that had held the Gate open since time immemorial. The Despoiler’s seizure of that world had finally destroyed its great pylons, allowing the Eye to spill at last from its boundaries and infect half the galaxy. Only splinters of those original sentinels were recovered, mere fragments of the occult nexus that had once existed to hem the tides back. They were taken from Cadia, tempered on dark forges, bound by fell sorceries and augmented in blood-soaked rites until their original power was twisted into that of pure ether-destruction. Just one such shard was now capable of extinguishing the warp’s touch from an entire planetary system. And if that system lay at the centre of a warp conduit, then the conduit was lost too.
There was a dark irony to that. For so long we had benefitted from the esoteric properties of the Cadian pylons to keep our enemies restricted. Now, having burst his bonds, the Despoiler had turned the wreckage of his old cage into weapons.
Of course, back then I knew nothing of that, and assumed we had merely stumbled on some arcane instrument of unknown provenance. As I gazed up the mighty well towards the suspended splinter of dark stone, though, I could sense the wrongness of it, as if it were sucking all life and hope into itself. I remembered how I had felt when Aleya had first been brought to me, and perceived the resemblance.
I do not truly understand that repulsion, even now. The warp was the source of so much anguish for us, and yet its absence generated perhaps the greatest abhorrence of all. I suppose that is the tragedy of our kind – we are like moths to the candle, bound inextricably to the thing that destroys us. I see no solution to that riddle, and wonder often if He ever truly did either.
Perhaps the Custodians know more than we do. If so, of course, they would never speak of it. They have changed in some ways, but many things remain the same.
I did not expect to lay eyes on Valerian again. In the event, though, I was surprised. He lived, as did two others, including the anathema psykana who had come with him to see me. The captain of Guilliman’s Space Marines told me that they had been discovered still standing, their bodies run through with wounds, their armour shattered, but they were still fighting. By the time I arrived at the site, perched high up inside the curving wall of that abyss, the medicae teams were already taking them away. The piles of bodies around the bulkhead and the smashed ruins of the rockcrete beyond were testament to their extraordinary resilience.
I could not share any words with him, though – he was unconscious, his ravaged face hidden behind a rebreather and his broken limbs covered in metal struts. His black cloak had been burned away, leaving him only with his battleplate of gold. Even in that comatose state, I thought how much more of a warrior that made him look – less of a hieratic guardian of the Palace, more like the Adeptus Astartes. Perhaps they would do away with those black robes now – I think they’d earned the right to cast them off.
The Sister of Silence was similarly wounded, as was the one other living Custodian. They were all borne away reverently, and as they were taken the power in the cylindrical chamber was finally drained down, ending the threat that the shard posed. Their true victory had been more profound than that, however, for it was clear that no others could have hoped to have held that ground for so long under such sustained attack. More eloquently than any argument in the Council, that defiance had made the case, and against all my pessimism, the effects of Dissolution came about in the end. In Council they would call it the Vorlese Precedent, the principle of deploying the Custodian Guard for those rare actions where their unique talents could best be employed and where no others could serve. They like to give these things such names. It makes them feel, I suppose, that they still have control.
The wider battle was not yet over, of course. Hard fighting lay ahead to recover the planet below and secure it against further assault. The enemy had stretched himself to the limit to strike at us so close, but we could not be sure that another host would not come on the heels of the first, and so Guilliman ordered a steady stream of reinforcements to join us over the coming days. Vorlese would be made into a fortress, one through which hundreds of warships would soon pass. We had lost one great sentinel world; soon another would rise to take its place.
I observed what I could of those preparations, unsure exactly of how the old remembrancers had done things and feeling far too old to be a good example of the breed. In my mind’s eye the great chroniclers of the past had always been younger, full of a dynamism that I had never really possessed. By the time we broke the veil back to Terra, however, I had data-slates full of material, all of which I diligently compiled into my account and placed in the archives.
This is what you are reading now, of course, supplemented by the oral testimony of others. I trust that it will be found useful, even as the Indomitus Crusade burns its way through the stars and war kindles like never before. So much relies on this, and our survival as a species still hangs in the balance. I do not truly know whether Guilliman is the saviour many think him to be, but I remain uniquely fortunate to have met him, even for that briefest of times.
In the event, that short excursion was my one and only experience of such service. I was not strong enough for the rigours of a full-scale campaign, and respectfully declined the offer of a second posting as remembrancer. Terra was and always had been my true home, for all its insanity and degradation.
More than that, though, I realised I had been distracted by all this for too long, lost in my old roles but without my old powers. All things change, and all things fade, and to fight against the waning of that light would have been hubris, not defiance. The Council of High Lords would remain in place, albeit with somewhat altered personnel and much reduced power, and someone needed to massage their egos and corral them into line.
Not me, you understand. The new cancellarius, as you will no doubt know, was Jek, and I could not have thought of anyone more suited to the task. I flatter myself she had had a first-class tutelage, though I suspect that in due course she will leave me far behind. In the interim, I offer what advice I can, hoping I do
not overstep my bounds, and am spending more and more time with the collections of finery in my chambers. They allowed me to keep that room as it was, and I find the artefacts a comfort. I made it to exhibit the best of us, and I would not want some officious scholiast breaking it up and sending the vases to the furnace.
I feel age creeping up on me now. I will not undergo yet more rejuve treatments, for I suspect that this galaxy is becoming something I will not recognise soon. Darker years lie ahead, just as they always have, and stronger souls will be needed to face them.
But I was blessed to witness those days, despite their horror. I was blessed to see the primarch return, and the Adeptus Custodes rise up from their long vigil to bring vengeance to the far reaches of the galaxy.
For so long I had doubted my worth, never shaking off the faint drag of shame that had dogged me since childhood, but I could look back now on my part in that great change and feel some satisfaction. They would make a difference now.
Valerian is among them, I believe, as is Aleya. Somewhere out in the void they are slaying, he with equanimity, she with that ever-burning anger. Perhaps they even serve together. I hope I will see them again before the end, though I am reconciled to the fact that I will probably not.
Things will unfold as they will. Experience has made me more accepting of that.
I no longer entertain the darkest of thoughts. I have learned, I think, to trust a little more. I have learned to let things go.
Most of all, I no longer doubt.
About the Author
Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Scars and The Path of Heaven, the Primarchs novel Leman Russ: The Great Wolf, the novellas Brotherhood of the Storm and Wolf King, and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Inquisition novel The Carrion Throne and the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, as well as the short story collection Wolves of Fenris. For Space Marine Battles, he has written the novels Wrath of Iron and War of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Time of Legends novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works near Bristol, in south-west England.
Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion Page 29
