by Dan Abnett
The attack to our backs was momentarily blocked, but then so too was our only egress. I wondered, frantically, how much charge was in the xenos guns, and how many more flects were left in the calfskin purse. As fast as we disassembled the advancing figures – and our reactions were swift and unrelenting, scrambling them into puffs of aurora glare and motes of light – as fast as we fought, they were back and there were more. It was like the worst combat simulations in the drill, where the old practice cages threw holoform targets at you with increasing and unflinching speed, two for every one you bested, one from the left for every one from the right, until you were overwhelmed and overcome, and it was time for Saur, over the metal grind of the cage powering down, to tell you exactly how you had failed this time.
Except Mentor Saur would not debrief us this time. He was bent over, dead in the porter’s chair with a hole in him so big I could have run my arm through him. There would be no debrief.
There would be no afterwards.
One touch of a reaching, grasping thought-form hand, and we would be made dead as simply and suddenly as old Mam Tontelle.
‘There’s no way out!’ Renner yelled, firing a pulse with a little too much finger-squeeze. The beam demolished a pink figure and then burned on like a lance and entirely destroyed one upright of the window frame and the sill beneath it.
Mam Mordaunt knew he was right. By then, her options had reduced to almost nil, and she was working with desperation alone. Any fate was better than this inevitability. Anything that might be fought or negotiated was preferable.
So, as she fired her weapon again, she spoke the words.
And those words were ‘Immaterial College’.
CHAPTER 23
Six saviours
Called by name, they came. All six of them.
Can I fault Eusebe for that decision? In hindsight, I cannot, though what arrived was hardly salvation. Back in that moment, in the mirror-hung apartment high in Stanchion House, I might have tried to stop her, having had some modest experience of the rapacious threat the visitors presented. Increased peril is seldom a solution to imminent danger.
But there was no time, and the words were out of her mouth before I could deny her. The visitors always came, summoned by the arcane coding woven into their name. Just a chance utterance of it had brought them to us in the muniment room, and we had been unknown to them. Mam Mordaunt, by her own admission, had been building a connection to them, negotiating with them remotely – by quizzing glass, I am certain – for some time, contemplating a pact with them, despite the clear, inherent dangers of such a relationship. She was desperate, and needed their strength as allies; they sought her as a resource, prizing the confidential knowledge she possessed.
If she had brokered that deal, it would have ended badly for her. She knew that, which is why she had resolved not to take that step. But now she was backed into a corner, in every sense, and with the grim pragmatism that seems to characterise the Cognitae, she had taken it anyway.
And it would end badly just the same.
So can I fault her? No. My life to that moment had been fraught with danger, and I had been too close to death too many times: in the chambers beneath the basilica, in the ghost halls of Feverfugue, in the pitchy depths of the Below… and those just begin my catalogue of near-lethal calamities. As the Golden Throne Above Us All is my witness, I believe that moment in Stanchion House was the closest I had come to extinction. It was pandaemonium, though not in the sense of the word as I would later understand it. The graels were deathless abominations. One alone was an insurmountable foe, and here were perhaps twenty of them, twenty unstoppable weapons of the Eight.
We were surrounded. We were trapped, and death was mere seconds or inches away. I was terrified, more terrified than I had ever been. There was no hope for us. So, no, I do not fault her. Something is always better than nothing.
The something that came… Well.
What had been pandaemonium became… There is no word. Words fail. When you are caught at a fever pitch of violent, chaotic jeopardy, the worst state you have ever known, and it becomes still worse, language simply runs out of superlatives and has nowhere to go.
First, then, there was a thunderclap.
No, no… First you must understand that everything that happened, happened fast. It had scarcely been a minute since the graels began their assault – a minute, if that. I have related these events to the best of my ability, but the very telling of it is a lifetime long compared to the flashing speed at which it occurred. So, to begin, know it was a blur of noise and turmoil in which even thought was incoherent until later recollection.
First, then, the fury of it. Then, the thunderclap. It shook the entire building. Later, I learned that the force of it had been so great, it had shaken loose some of the makeshift structures hanging from the girders of Stanchion House, and sent them plunging to the streets below, or left them swinging, cables fraying, their occupants clinging on and screaming. The whole building rocked. What was left of the glass in the breached casements blew in. Mirrors flew off their hooks, and smashed. The smack of air stung me. I tasted blood in my mouth.
A seething black cloud, the nimbus cap of a tempest, rolled in across the afternoon sky, and crowned the building. It did not move like weather, not even weather driven by a cyclone wind. It boiled in upon us, like black ink squirted through water, staining the sky in swirling, churning folds. Streaks of lightning stitched through it, golden threads woven into billowing black silk.
The visitors arrived together: two on the terrace outside, the other four in the room with us. They appeared, in the first instant, as glassy forms, just as they were when they had tried to push through the walls and doors of the muniment room, milky-glass things that seemed just vapours in humanoid form. But then the glassiness filled in, with colour and depth and detail, and they resolved into real, solid things. I believe they had manifested by some form of bilocation, an energetic transfer of matter from one place to another. It was not a teleport, though I know such rare and strange technology exists. It was an action of sublime sorcery, that moved animate material from a ‘there’ to a ‘here’. The insolent use of such power wounded the world: the massing storm, the quake of the building… That was reality twitching in trauma as its fundamental laws were violated.
The moment they were whole, the visitors unleashed destruction. There was no hesitation. They had appeared among the advancing grael figures, and they knew them immediately as enemies. There was no warning, or challenge issued. They set to at once.
The graels reacted to the abrupt arrival before the first blow was even struck. They flinched, recoiling from each visitor that appeared in their midst. Though they had assumed human shapes, the graels had not, until that moment, betrayed any human response or emotional reaction. They had simply come at us with unfathomable, automaton intent. Now they baulked for an instant, exhibiting a flicker of body language: surprise, alarm, dismay, perhaps even fear or revulsion. It was disturbing, and passing strange to see the coloured phantoms display such human reactions.
I thought of my once-friend Judika. He had been a grael, raised to that state by the Maze Undue’s programme. His blacksoul form had become a vessel – by means, I think, of some small, foul white spider-thing lodged in his throat – for a grael power, which he could manifest as a projection, a magent orb, that he could send out across distances. Had circumstances conspired that way, it would have been my fate too. I imagined then a picture of other nulls like Judika Sowl, trained and harvested by the Maze Undue and, perhaps, similar institutions, and sent to serve the King in Yellow. From his hand, they had taken the crackling albino spiders on their tongues like communion wafers, and become his templars, the good daemons who served as his foremost warriors. They had become of the Eight. Eight for the legs. Eight for the points. Eight because that’s what they ate. Teke, the Smiling One, had crooned that like some nurse
ry rhyme, but so it was. And Alace Quatorze had been quite wrong. The Eight were far more than that in number.
I thought of them, pariah children who had been like me, whose futures had been decided and their hopes excised, and who had then been harnessed as these things. Somewhere, perhaps somewhere in Queen Mab, or perhaps in the City of Dust, they sat, sending out these grael projections to destroy us, infused with boundless psykanic power and channelling the very warp, remotely guiding the graels as orbs, or human forms, or whatever, I imagine, they chose to conjure. They were dedicated, sworn to service, bound by faith, and immeasurably empowered to execute the King’s will.
And now they flinched. Their thought-forms, for one unguarded instant, mimicked the reactions of their flesh bodies, far away, jumping in surprise and alarm, echoing and revealing the all-too-human responses of their guiding vessels. At the Basilica Saint Orphaeus, months before, Judika’s grael form had been wounded by Scarpac the Word Bearer’s cursed blade. Judika’s flesh body had later shown that ghastly warp-wound upon it. That was sympathetic psychomagic, the flesh host suffering a reflection of the injury done to his projected thought-form. So then here, but in reverse, the thought-forms reflexively simulated the startled effect of their remote operators.
Though sublimely powerful, the graels had much to fear. The visitors, as Gideon had conjectured, were Adeptus Astartes. They were Space Marines, in full panoply of wargear. But, contrary to Gideon’s theory, they were not all of the XV traitor host.
One was. Their chieftain, clearly. He was the tallest of them, a towering form, which manifested in the heart of the grael ranks. His warplate was gleaming lapis lazuli, quite the bluest blue I had ever seen. It was trimmed in burnished gold, and half-shrouded by a long, iridescent robe that flowed like oil. His warhelm, dashed with more lapis bands, was golden too, and fashioned to form the nemes headcloth and pschent double-crown of the Pharaonic kingdoms in ancient days. The crown’s crest swooped high, adding to his stature, and it was as white as glacial ice. His face was a sculpted visor of snarling gold with cruel slits for frowning eyes and downturned mouth. This, as I was about to learn, was Senefuru, also named the Prosperine. In one fist, he held a rod of polished copper two metres long, capped by a silver finial in the form of a yowling feline’s head. In the other, he brandished an ornate khopesh, the hooked sickle-sword of the Nilus Delta.
The instant he appeared, he swept the khopesh sideways with a fluid grace and precision that I would not have thought a figure encumbered by such massive warplate could have managed. It was deft, like the supple flick of a nimble assassin. It lopped the head off the grael to his right. The grael, a cobalt thing, fell to one knee and collapsed. This was not damage as we had rendered it, no temporary disruption of thought-form. This cut. I heard the vox-crackle howl of spider-pain. The severed stump of neck bled energy that flowed like water, spattering the floor. This liquid was white, like ichor.
Beside the magnificent Thousand Son was another Space Marine, not as tall, but quite the most massive of the six. His hulking plate was matt-grey, as though each weighty part of it had been cored from igneous magnetite. Its edges and panels were quite plain and without trim. The only decorations were the innumerable glyphs etched in it in gold leaf. They glowed in the smooth dull surfaces, as though lit from within by flames. He had the aspect of an auroch, of immense physical power, of hunched shoulders and pugnacious head. In his immense paws, he clutched a long-hafted war-flail with a studded, chain-hinged striking-head. He, beyond doubt, was of the indomitable IV Legion, so named the Iron Warriors.
With a tectonic roar, he began to swing the huge flail, two-handed, driving it into the graels within range. They ruptured, demolished and half-crushed, their coloured shapes deforming like mashed flesh, jetting sprays of ichor.
The sorcerer of the Thousand Sons spoke. He yelled across the chamber to Mam Mordaunt.
‘You called to us, Zoya. Our name was spoken and we heard it.’
His was the voice at the muniment room door, a low, bass intonation with a hollow echo. Again, there was an accent to it, as though he was speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. He had called her Zoya. From this, I knew Mam Mordaunt had guarded her name, using that of her function, to block control over her, for the visitors possessed immeasurable influence through names.
‘I pledge to you, Senefuru of Tizca!’ she yelled back. ‘As Zoya Farnessa, I pledge to your College, O Prosperine! Protect me as you promised!’
‘And in return–’
‘You’ll get what you demanded! This is no time to specify terms!’
It was not. Carnage reigned, threatening to shred the room, the entire floor of the building.
‘End them,’ boomed the hollow voice of the magician-warrior to his brethren. They required no such instruction, for the miniature war had begun the instant they appeared. The graels were enemies to be neutralised on sight. The Iron Warrior’s war-flail was matted with white sap-blood as he smashed graels aside, but they were rallying fast, and turning on him and his kind. Coloured thought-form hands reached out, and where they touched Astartes plate, searing sparks spat out, and the armoured warrior lurched back as though stung or shot.
‘Uraeon Tancredo!’ the Thousand Son howled. ‘Contain the prize!’
I know little of the great Adeptus Astartes, except for what I was made to study in the secret books of the Maze Undue, but I knew that they were breeds apart, even to each other. To see an Iron Warrior work alongside one of the Thousand Sons, that was beyond explanation. Even the so-called Traitor Legions, who had turned against the Throne and fallen with the heretic Lupercal, seldom aligned. Their ambitions, and their private daemon-gods, were quite incompatible.
So it was with incredulity that I beheld the third of the visitors as, on the instruction of his mage-lord, he tore through the melee to reach Mam Mordaunt and secure her.
His plate was black, marked in white. Like the Iron Warrior, the armour was richly engraved with golden glyphs upon almost every surface. He wielded a golden fuscina, and his head was bare, except for a heavy rebreather that encased his nose, mouth and the lower half of his skull like a collar. His head was shaved, and inlaid with ghost lines of circuitry, and his glaring eyes seemed very old, as though they had seen too many endless wars.
His name, as the mage-lord had cried it, was Tancredo. And he was of the Iron Hands.
‘Against the wall!’ he ordered as he broke towards us. His bladed trident skewered a grael, and then hoisted it away over his shoulder, its limbs flailing as it tumbled. His voice was solemn and stern. It had been the one speaking from the end window of the muniment room the night before.
He came at Mam Mordaunt, ignoring both me and Renner. How could a loyal Astartes be standing with these others?
He was huge to us, like a noble god. He cursed and rocked as a crimson grael struck his ribs with a sparking touch, and punched it through the torso with the spike-end of the fuscina. It uttered a crackling wail as the haft wrenched out in a spray of white fluid, and fell to its hands and knees.
‘Against the wall, I said!’ Tancredo snarled.
‘I am your ally, not your prisoner–’ Mam Mordaunt yelled back.
He rammed the trident at her, and pinned her to the wall. The middle and left-hand blades of the fuscina’s head were either side of her neck, the lunge-rest against her throat. Her eyes were wide with horror. The tines had drawn blood from both sides of her neck. A whisker either way, and it would have speared her through and killed her. Was this a measure of his skill, or a callous disregard?
She had been slammed into the wall, dislodging more mirrors.
‘You do as you are told, Zoya Farnessa,’ Tancredo hissed. He said it with particular intonation, as though the words alone would hold her in place as firmly as the trident. They would not, for that name had no power in it.
‘Protect my friends too,’ she gasped.
�
�This is no time to specify terms,’ he replied, mocking her with her own words. He jerked the trident out, allowing her to lurch forward, and swung aside, driving the weapon at graels who surged to assault.
‘This was a mistake,’ she said, to us or to herself. She wiped blood away from her neck with the heel of her hand.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it has borrowed back time from death.’
‘A minute or two,’ Renner muttered. He was looking towards the windows. Hundreds more graels were flying towards us, a twinkling constellation of coloured stars against the black storm. Surprised by the College, the Eight were flooding us with reinforcements. I had never imagined that so many could exist. The power of the visitors was humbling, but surely even the six of them could not combat this eudaemonic onslaught.
Perhaps Mam Mordaunt had known that when she called their name. Perhaps, all along, this had been her audacious attempt to wreak utter confusion during which we could effect escape. She had not let them have her name, so she was permitting them no permanent hold on her. She expected to break from their company.
But the visitors were implacable.
By then, the nature of the other three had become apparent, and each of them was just as fearsome as their kin. In the apartment chamber with Senefuru, Tancredo and the bestial Iron Warrior, was an Astartes in moss-green armour, covered with a long, cream, hooded surcoat. The surcoat, tied at the waist with a golden rope, was embroidered with eldritch glyphs like those engraved on the plate of Tancredo, and that of Perturabo’s spawn. This cruel champion was most certainly a son of the Lion, of the First Legion Dark Angels. He swung an executioner’s sword of such great length it seemed the size of a spear. The beheading sword’s long grip was almost half the length of the weapon itself, and the long, straight, flat blade, double-edged, had a rounded, blunt tip.
On the terrace beyond the windows fought the remaining two, shredding the grael foe in the fulminous storm-light. One wore glyphed armour of sheened black, marked with white blazons. His black warhelm was snouted, like the beak of a great corvid. He fought with a brace of split-tipped swords, whose forks and serrated edges ravaged the psychomagical flesh of the foe. He had wings. They were full and huge, like the wings of Comus Nocturnus, but they were as glossy black as a crow’s, and even from a distance I could tell they were not an organic part of him, as Comus’ were. They were manifestations of psychomagic, ethereal wings fashioned in the void and fletched in the warp. Yet they seemed fully alive, beating as living things, an extension of his broad back.
