Fate would not be changed. Destiny was unalterable.
The fist clamped tight around him. The shadow of hopelessness spread across his sight.
The fleet’s barrage continued without pause. The power to destroy civilisations reached out for the phantom, and found nothing. The pict screen shuddered, ship positions realigned and the cruiser Laudem Sanguinum was far ahead of the formation, in the lee of the great shadow. The phantom lashed out, its weapons fire represented by the hololiths as dark, streaking claws. The Laudem vanished.
The shadow grew again. The abyss of foretold death opened up before Sanguinius. It was ready for him. It would not be denied. Choice and hope died in its maw.
Unless…
The possibility had no shape. It barely had existence. It was no more than a sliver, a thin, trembling slash of silver in the darkness. It flashed at Sanguinius, a glimmer so slight he might have missed it, yet so insistent he had no choice but to turn to it.
Unless…
Unless what? The sliver trembled like hope. He could not articulate it. He did not know where the embryonic thought came from, or where it might go. If he looked at it too closely, it might vanish. But it was there, real, a silver scratch in the night of destiny. Unless, unless, unless… A seed of possibility. The tiniest deviation in the march of the inevitable. His spirit lunged for it, cutting through the phantom’s grip with razored wingbeats.
‘Lord!’ Mautus called. ‘There’s a breach in the empyrean ahead.’
Sanguinius fought his way to the reality of the bridge. He stared at the shadow on the tactical screen. The beast taunted his fleet and killed his sons. There was a flash of primal fury. He hungered for revenge, for the brutal satisfaction of the foe’s slaughter. He tore the anger from his heart, and embraced the salvation of reason. ‘Fleet master,’ he said to Carminus. ‘Take us out of the warp. All ships, abandon pursuit and transition. Now.’
‘So ordered.’
The trajectories on the screen changed infinitesimally. The reaction of the warp was immediate. The wake of the phantom seemed to sense the change of intent. The empyrean crashed against the fleet with renewed madness. The storm howled. The Red Tear’s Geller field buckled under the strain. Klaxons sounded warnings, and the air of the bridge shimmered, barely holding back the teeth of Chaos. The battleship’s hull groaned, giving voice to a choir of structural and machinic stress. Carminus pushed the ship’s integrity to the edge as he hurled the Red Tear towards the gap in the barrier between dream and reality.
At the edge of Sanguinius’ consciousness, the sliver of possibility gleamed and pulsed. Unless, unless, unless.
The Red Tear plunged through the wall of the storm.
The Word Bearers’ Navigators died from the strain of the jump, but they kept their vow. The Ultramarines emerged from the Mandeville point inside the Anesidorax System with all ships intact. Their Navigators were exhausted, and their sanity was strained. But they had followed the leads of Nekras and Yathinius, and they had survived. Guilliman was not pleased to learn Nekras had died with a smile on her face, but he was satisfied with the result. The vow had been kept, regardless of the reason.
He had used the enemy.
He ordered the corpses jettisoned from the Samothrace. He left the athames in his quarters. The thought of turning them against the foe grew more insistent, but he pushed it away for now.
Thrinos appeared in the primary oculus, its orbit shining darkly with the assembled might of the Dark Angels fleet.
Beside Guilliman’s pulpit, the screens lit up with the positions of the new ships emerging from the warp.
‘Identified,’ Lautenix said after a few seconds. ‘The Ninth Legion.’
Simultaneous arrivals? Guilliman thought. He ran through a dozen theoreticals to explain the phenomenon. None satisfied. Their common foundation was the denial of coincidence.
‘Hail the Red Tear,’ Guilliman ordered. ‘I will speak with my brother by hololith.’
He moved to a chamber at the rear of the strategium. The doors sealed behind him, and he climbed the plinth on which rested a hololith plate. The Samothrace’s lithocast system was not as powerful as the one in the Macragge’s Honour, but it would serve for ships at this proximity.
The air charged with energy. A few moments later, Sanguinius appeared before him, standing on a podium of red granite. Slight artefacting marred the perfection of the illusion of the Angel’s presence. The Ruinstorm was damaging transmissions over even such a short distance.
‘It’s hard not to read significance in the timing of our arrival, isn’t it?’ Guilliman said.
‘I have no hesitation in seeing it as meaningful,’ said Sanguinius. ‘I can already hear your scepticism, brother, but what can this be except fate?’ The Angel spoke with certainty, but his eyes were troubled, as if he wanted Guilliman to refute him.
Guilliman tried to formulate an answer. A good one would bring them both a measure of peace of mind, he thought. But his doubts slowed him down by a second, and before he could speak, Sanguinius completed his thought, freezing Guilliman’s words.
‘We walk our assigned path,’ said the Angel.
Seven
Witnesses to the Pilgrimage
The wind of Thrinos was cold and hard. It blew over the refugee camps, just strong enough to stir the fabric of the shelters of the more recent arrivals. They had not yet had time to build stronger, more rigid defences against its insistent, insidious touch. On the ramparts of the Iron Hands fortress, Sanguinius faced west, into the wind, looking out over the vista of misery.
‘How many?’ he asked Levannas.
‘A few million at our last estimate, Lord Sanguinius,’ the Raven Guard said. He was acting as guide to the Angel, Raldoron and the Sanguinary Guard. Guilliman had not yet descended from the Samothrace, and Sanguinius had chosen to learn the truths of the desperate of Thrinos before his conference with his brothers. ‘More are arriving all the time,’ Levannas said.
Sanguinius could feel the Lion’s eyes on him. From somewhere in the keep behind him, his brother was observing. It would be against his nature to do otherwise. To know without being known, isn’t that it, brother? Did the Lion think his interest in the refugees was a waste of time? Perhaps. But perhaps not. The Lion was not a machine.
The keep was a structure of brutal, jutting walls and jagged angles. The Iron Hands had constructed it from the remains of broken ships. It was patchwork, but it was strong. There was a funereal quality to the structure. It was constructed from the bones of loss. Once proud vessels had been gutted by the years of battle. However many engagements Khalybus’ company had won, attrition was wearing them down, and eating away at their strength. The fortress was defiant, but it was just as much a last resort as the shacks and tents that surrounded it.
The refugees used whatever materials the Iron Hands discarded. Sanguinius saw constructions of plasteel and burnt, twisted shielding. A few miles to the north-east, the entire stern of a frigate, gutted of everything but the skeletons of the decks, had become the hard refuge of tens of thousands. Hundreds of fires, lit against the growing cold of the late afternoon, flickered in the huge shell.
‘How are they fed?’ Sanguinius asked.
‘There was a colony here before our arrival,’ said Levannas. ‘Not a major one, but enough to have developed an agricultural industry.’
‘I’m surprised,’ Raldoron said. ‘This does not strike me as a fertile world.’
‘It isn’t. Not very. The settlers are… were… miners. The colonists grew enough to subsist, and had a small surplus to stockpile against the years of weak harvests.’
Sanguinius frowned. ‘And this influx of population is being fed by that surplus?’
‘Essentially, yes,’ Levannas said.
‘Hardly a long-term solution.’
‘No, it is not. Nothing on Thrinos is.’<
br />
If the war ever came to Thrinos, the fortress would be swept away along with everything else.
Tents and shacks stretched to the horizon on all sides of the fortress. The size of the camps was a testament to loss, Sanguinius thought. So many refugees from so many worlds had come here. As he walked, a clamour rose from below, growing louder, becoming more and more distinct from the general din of the camp. He looked down the hundred feet of sheer, ablative sheeting. A crowd was gathering at the foot of the wall; there were already a few thousand people. Their faces were upraised. They lifted their arms towards Sanguinius. They shouted and wept for joy.
Sanguinius had seen some of this behaviour on Macragge, after he had been proclaimed emperor. But word of the Imperium Secundus could not have reached Thrinos. And there was a frenzy, a desperation to the celebration that was new. ‘Tell me what I am seeing,’ he said to Levannas.
‘After years of despair, three primarchs have come to Thrinos.’
‘That isn’t all, though, is it?’
‘No,’ Levannas admitted. ‘They are rejoicing at the sight of you, Lord Sanguinius. At what you represent.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Your symbolism,’ he added, grimacing in apology.
Sanguinius nodded. That was hardly a new experience for him, though it had always distressed him when he had encountered it before. Any sort of mystification of his being was contrary to the Imperial Truth. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘There is a…’ The Raven Guard paused. ‘A folklore,’ he said. ‘A mythology in this camp.’
‘Oh?’ Sanguinius said sharply.
‘Quite a specific one, and consistent across the worlds these people have fled.’
‘Myths are turning out to have a very dangerous core of truth these days,’ said Raldoron.
‘So we have been coming to learn,’ Levannas said.
‘What are the stories being told?’ Azkaellon asked.
Sanguinius held up a hand before Levannas answered. ‘I want to hear them first-hand,’ he told the Raven Guard. ‘Take us below.’
The primarch’s party walked away from the wall, down a relatively wide and straight avenue, one of a dozen radiating out from the fortress and dividing the camp into sectors. The Sanguinary Guard tried to form a cordon around Sanguinius, but he shook his head and walked on. The people lined the sides of the avenue, weeping at the sight of the Angel. They held their arms out in entreaty. Sanguinius swallowed his distaste in the worship he saw in their eyes and moved back and forth, touching the tips of fingers with his gauntlets. The hope he saw spread through the crowd had value, even if he did not like its source. It was what the refugees called to him that he wanted to hear, though.
‘You will save us!’ they cried.
‘The Emperor has heard us!’
‘The Pilgrim will not find us here!’
‘Shield us from the Pilgrim!’
The pleas were consistent, and Sanguinius saw the truth of what Levannas had said. The people before him were from a multitude of civilisations. No matter the skin tones and cultural encoding of their ragged clothes, they were unified in their desperate gratitude towards him and their terror of the Pilgrim.
Sanguinius rejoined Levannas in the centre of the dusty avenue. ‘The Pilgrim,’ he said. ‘What do they mean?’
‘That hardly sounds like a name for Horus,’ Raldoron said.
‘Perhaps one of Lorgar’s zealots,’ Azkaellon suggested.
‘We have refugees from traitor-occupied worlds,’ Levannas said. ‘They don’t talk about the Pilgrim.’
Sanguinius narrowed his eyes. ‘So many of these people come from worlds that have not fallen to Horus’ forces?’
‘Most have not,’ said Levannas. ‘The majority of the recent arrivals have been fleeing something else.’
‘Fleeing what?’
‘I’m not sure. The stories are vague on that point. I’m not sure the people know themselves. Events have surpassed their ability to understand.’ He scanned the crowd, then pointed to a cluster of figures a few hundred yards ahead and to the right. ‘I suggest you speak with them, Lord Sanguinius.’
A score of men and women stood beneath the overhang of a broken girder. The metal fragment was the smallest part of a ship’s framework, but it towered over this sector of the camp. It had been painted by what appeared to be hundreds of hands, endlessly reproducing the aquila. The symbols overlapped and spread up the girder’s height. The group beneath were all robed. They had shaved their heads and marked their scalps with the aquila again, some with crude tattoos, others by having the symbol carved into their flesh. They knelt and bowed their heads as the Angel and his party drew near. The people around them followed their example.
Sanguinius frowned. He paused before approaching the group. ‘This is a cult,’ he said to Levannas.
‘It is.’
‘You seem unperturbed.’
‘The cult’s loyalty to the Emperor is fanatical. The force of these people’s belief has had some positive impact on the wider morale of the camp. Given the circumstances, Captain Khalybus decided it was impractical and counterproductive to suppress it.’
‘You agree?’
‘I do. Stamping it out would also have involved a waste of resources.’ Levannas paused for a moment. ‘But you see now, Lord Sanguinius, why your appearance is having a pronounced effect.’
‘I do. It is not what I would choose.’
‘I understand. Nothing on Thrinos is what any of us would choose.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’
The Angel walked towards the kneeling mortals. He signalled Azkaellon to keep the Sanguinary Guard a few steps back. He did not want these people so overwhelmed they could not speak. ‘Stand,’ he said when he reached them. ‘I would speak to you.’
They stood. Like all the other refugees, they were ragged, malnourished, exhausted. Desperation and the terror of war had carved deep lines into their faces. There were weeping sores on their lips and on their arms. But when they looked at Sanguinius, there was more than fear in their eyes. There was hope. It was primal, almost feral. And it refused to be extinguished.
‘Tell me about the Pilgrim,’ Sanguinius said.
It took a moment before any of the mortals found their voices. ‘It is the destroyer, lord,’ said one man. Sanguinius thought he was young, but the war had added decades to his age.
‘It is the bringer of ruin,’ a woman said. She was old. Her back was hunched. Her gnarled fingers had never known juvenat treatments. ‘When it comes to a world, the world ends.’
‘It visited all of our worlds,’ said a second man. He was missing his right arm. ‘It travels, and where it passes, the end follows.’
‘It?’ Sanguinius asked. ‘The Pilgrim is not a warrior, then?’
‘No, lord,’ said the woman.
‘What is it, then?’
There was uncertainty again.
‘It is blackness in the sky,’ the one-armed man said. ‘It is made of night.’
Whatever the Pilgrim was, it had been transformed in their minds by superstitious awe. And yet… Sanguinius exchanged a look with Raldoron. The First Captain concealed his worry well, but Sanguinius could see it all the same. They shared the same thought. The descriptions of the Pilgrim were disturbingly familiar.
‘Is it a ship?’ Sanguinius asked.
The mortals didn’t seem to know. Instead of answering directly, they offered more myths. The Pilgrim was to them less a thing than an event. It was darkness, and it brought darkness. Finally, the younger man said, ‘It isn’t a ship, lord. It’s too big.’
‘Have you served on vessels?’ Sanguinius asked him.
‘I have. On mass conveyors.’
He spoke from experience, then. He was familiar with massive ships.
‘The Pilgrim is the end,’ the man continued. ‘It co
mes, and when we look up into the dark, we are looking at the doom of our world.’
‘What is the ruin it brings?’ Sanguinius thought he already knew the answer to that.
There was yet another moment of silence, as if the mortals feared that their answers would be a conjuration. The old woman stepped forwards, seeking comfort in Sanguinius’ shadow. She bowed her head and whispered, ‘Nightmares. Nightmares that walk, and we cannot awake from the sight of them.’
‘And change,’ the younger man said. ‘The ruin is change. The worlds are transformed.’
‘Into what?’ said the Angel.
‘Into nightmares.’
‘We thank the Emperor for you coming,’ said the one-armed man. ‘You will stop the dark fates, lord. You will stop the Pilgrim.’
The hope in their eyes pulled at Sanguinius. It gave him no strength. They were feeding on his presence.
He met with his brothers in the command chamber at the top of the keep’s squat turret. It was a pyramidal structure on the roof. Narrow armourglass windows looked out over the camp in every direction. The walls, floor and furnishings were iron. It was a space of cold functionality. Khalybus brought the primarchs to the room, and then withdrew. When they were alone, the Lion described what had been found outside the Pandorax System.
‘The way to Terra is through Davin,’ he said.
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