Penitent

by Dan Abnett

  ‘But brothers fight,’ I pushed. ‘Families squabble.’

  ‘Not when the cause is united,’ he began, ‘and not when Tizcan sorcery compels the wills of those reluctant or–’

  His sentence never finished. There was a brutal crack of bone, and Xarbia reeled aside, tumbling across the deck. The majestic Raven Guard Space Marine stood there, lowering one of his forked swords, glaring at the Night Lord in contempt. His massive crow wings furled against his back.

  ‘You talk too much, Xarbia,’ said the voice from his black beak of a helmet. ‘You spill cursed secrets.’

  Xarbia pulled himself up. The anger in his face was like a beacon fire. There was a bloody gash across his left cheek.

  ‘It is not your place to chastise me, Zephyr,’ he spat, and then became a blur entirely. His saintie, an extension of his form, lanced at the Raven Guard, who wrapped it away with a twist of his blade. Faster than the eye could follow, the two were trading blows, metal on metal.

  ‘Move your arse, Lightburn!’ I snapped.

  I ran, leading the injured Renner down the deck in a rush towards the open hatch.

  I looked back. The two visitors had already broken their violent brawl and seen our escape. They were cursing each other freely as they turned to pursue us. I hurled the remaining grenade, praying that I might catch them both in another stasis loop and snare them fast for a minute at least.

  The grenade bounced and rolled along the deck to meet them. They both saw it coming and leapt back, wings opening to loft them away and clear.

  The grenade went off.

  It was not a stasis bomb.

  The blast filled the centre part of the assembly hall with a slamming fireball that shredded the deck, and ripped a shockwave in all directions. Xarbia was blown I know not where, eclipsed by the outflung flames. The other, Zephyr, was thrown sideways like a fly swatted from the air, and struck a stack of freight containers. He crumpled their sides, fell, and they toppled onto him.

  Though we were further from the epicentre, the searing blast felled us too. I was hurled clear through the open hatch onto the rusted platform outside. Renner was pummelled down by air-shock just inside the doorway. He cried out. He had landed badly on his broken hand, and renewed pain tore through him.

  Dazed, I rose.

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ I yelled. I staggered back to reach him, but he was already on his feet, despite the crippling hurt. He shambled forward to catch me up.

  ‘Wait!’ I yelled, at the very last second. From outside, I could see the witch-marks on the hatch’s corroded sill. I had the moldavite charm, Renner did not.

  I fought to pull it off over my head. It caught on my coat’s collar.

  Renner waited, desperately repeating my name. Behind him, beside the pool of roaring flame left by the grenade, the toppled containers stirred. Zephyr clawed his way out from under them, tossing the wreckage aside.

  I got the charm off, and threw it across the doorway to Renner. Encumbered by his broken hand, he missed the catch. The charm fell on the deck. He scrambled to grab it, gasping in pain, made awkward by his injury.

  Ten metres behind him, Zephyr powered into a running jump, his carrion wings opening wide. He soared down the assembly hall towards us, dropping low to make the strike.

  ‘Renner!’

  His good hand found the charm, scooped it up, and then he threw himself forward through the hatchway. The Raven Guard was diving, just inches from his back.

  But he did not pass through the doorway.

  Without the charm on his person, Zephyr of the Raven Guard was arrested in mid-air, as though by an invisible net. He shrieked in agony as he was thrown backwards. The glyphs on his sheened backplate flared and went out, and his terrifying crow wings vanished in a blink. He hit the deck, his split-tip swords clattering away from him, and lay very still.

  I pulled Renner to his feet. We didn’t speak. His pain was so great his mouth was clamped tight. We fled.

  The shipyard was a ruin, open to the sky. The sky above us was storm black, and clouds of smoke from the burning building below us poured up over the lip of the structure and blew back across the port. To either hand stood cadaverous cranes and derricks, the rusted bones of old machines, the decomposing carcasses of ancient vessels.

  I saw the part-ruined cargo hall to our right – the closest, it seemed, to the roof access. That was how she’d described it. Inside, amid clutter and the slow collapse of decades, we found a bank of freight elevators. They were large, oblong cage cars, ribbed with steel bars and mesh, made for bulk cargoes. They stood inside iron frames, cages within cages, the heavy gearing filling the roof space above them. None of them looked like they worked.

  ‘This?’ Renner groaned in disbelief.

  ‘One of them,’ I promised. Unless she had lied.

  I hurried along the line of them, searching for a mark or number. They were numbered, but only with the stamp-printed Administratum plates, most of which had become disfigured or illegible. Two cars were missing entirely, their empty shafts yawning into nothing. Broken cables hung like dead snakes, an alarming sign of neglect.

  Then I saw it. One car, in the middle of the bank. Its plate number had been scratched at and altered to read ‘119’. The car’s cage frame and collapsible metal gate were tagged with witch-marks.

  ‘The charm!’ I called. Renner, still hugging his fractured hand to his chest, tossed it to me carefully. I snatched it out of the air, put it on, and heaved the old outer gate open, its metal ribs concertinaing tight with a squeal of bare metal. Then I hauled the inner one open just the same.

  ‘Renner! Come on!’ I called.

  He could not. Sadoth Xarbia had soared into the cargo hall and landed, silent as a butterfly, between us. He was blocking any chance Renner had of reaching me.

  The Night Lord turned to regard me. His wings quivered, like the whirring of a moth. Their red, skeletal fans seemed to beat from within, like blood pulsing in capillaries. His grey hair was scorched. There were burns on the flesh of his face.

  ‘You will not leave us without a proper goodbye,’ he said.

  He took a step towards me.

  ‘You threw a bomb at me,’ he hissed. ‘I do not think our leave-taking will be friendly.’

  Xarbia had lost his saintie. His long hands, at his sides, made a sound like spring-locks setting. Steel claws, each one a dagger, slotted out of his gauntlet-backs and covered his fingers, making the clawlike digits into true talons.

  I had nothing left. My pistol, still holstered, would be useless against him, and I could hardly fight an Astartes armed only with a blinksword. There was nothing in my pockets except a leaking perfume bottle and a calfskin purse, now almost empty.

  As he lunged at me, I wrenched out the purse and all but spilled the contents at him. The three or four glass pebbles remaining bounced off his face and chestplate. Two shattered.

  Xarbia reeled backwards as though I had tossed acid in his face. He gurgled and hissed, and fell to one knee. The psykanic negation of the flects had stripped him of sorcerous trappings, and stricken him with pain. His opalescent armour lost its lustre and went dull, no matter how the light caught it. His great red wings winked away into nothing. He was choking, throttled by his own blood, which spilled out of his lips. I could smell the rancid, animal stink of him, now the glamour was gone.

  I jumped into the elevator. Renner hurried to me, his face drained of all colour. I threw him the charm, and he put it on and stepped into the car beside me. Xarbia, on his knees, spat and hawked blood, and tried to get up.

  I slammed the inner cage-gate. There was no time for the outer. Renner was trying to pull the lever that initiated power. I pushed him and his fumbling aside, yanked it across, and heard the hum and whirr of mechanisms engaging. I thumped the lowest marker of the elevator panel. The button lit, amber, then green.


  There was a pause; the cage car shivered, swaying in the tight throat of the shaft. Then, with a lurch, the gears began to wind, and the car began to descend. It was a rapid plunge that put my heart in my mouth. I steadied myself, and saw a last glimpse of the crippled Xarbia, spewing blood in a hunched, foetal position, before the rising deck blocked him from view.

  We rattled down the shaft, as though we were descending into hell. It was very dark, and the ancient mechanism was alarmingly noisy. Each floor passed with a strobe of cold twilight. Renner leant back against the cage wall of the car, barely able to stand. His hand – he clutched it by the wrist with the other to keep it clear of any impact – was buckled in the most horrible way. I looked at him, to say something encouraging.

  There was a hard, metallic impact, and the whole car shook. Xarbia had landed on the roof of the descending elevator. He peered down at us through the cage roof, his talons scraping at the bars and mesh.

  ‘A proper goodbye,’ he hissed. There was murder in his black-on-black eyes. He began to tear and rake the mesh apart to get at us.

  I drew the Tronsvasse, and emptied the entire magazine up through the roof of the cage. The gunfire was deafening in the confines of the shaft. Spent brass, hot as coals, spat from the slide and pinged off the bars and the floor. The cage roof stopped some of my shots. Others punched through and spanked off his warplate. He yelped and flinched, but I couldn’t hit his face. With a cackle, he resumed his frantic clawing and sawing at the top of the plummeting car.

  I kept control. I ejected the empty magazine from the Kal40’s grip, and swiftly slotted in my pre-loaded spare. I resumed firing, aiming the gun up with both hands, but this time I was more selective. I fired single shots, shifting my feet to move position, trying to get a line on his head. He ducked and weaved, cursing me at every shot that flew out past him or flattened against his armour. His claws dug into the cage roof and began to peel it back.

  I edged sideways, my eyes on him, and found a shot, clear at his brow. His taloned fist ripped down through the car’s roof and seized the pistol as it fired, robbing my line. The Tronsvasse crumpled like foil as he squeezed.

  I let go, of course. But I kept my right hand raised nevertheless, and urged the weight of the blinksword into it. The sword appeared, instantly stabbed through mangled ceiling, its conjured form taking precedence over existing matter. Xarbia yelped. The blade had blinked into place inside the reach of his down-stretched hand, through his right pauldron, and drawn an incision across his right cheek and ear. He wore a bloody scar to match the one Zephyr had given him.

  His cursing became furious and grimly obscene. The Raven Guard had warned him for sharing secrets, but now he shared all of them, every last, bloody, appalling detail of how he planned to punish and dispose of me. He clawed down at me, almost all of his right arm inside the car. I tried to pull the sword free, but it was stuck fast through the indomitable ceramite of his shoulder guard. I held on. As he pulled and thrashed, I found myself briefly lifted off the floor of the car, clinging to the hilt.

  His talons swung for me. I blinked the sword away, and dropped out of his reach.

  I shouted for Renner. He still had the heavy Mastoff assault-auto slung across his back, a weapon with considerably more rounds and penetrative power than my pistol.

  He staggered forwards, fighting the sway and shudder of the travelling lift, and tried to unship the weapon from his back, but with one hand useless, the strap and weight were tangling him. I grabbed him. I could not detach the gun from him, but I managed to twist the strap around his body so that it was in front of him. He raised it, bracing the barrel with his left hand, though his right hand was never going to fire it. I hugged myself to him, my chest to his back, and hooked my right arm under his, seizing the grip. He tilted the barrel up with his left hand, and I pulled the trigger. Locked together, just out of reach of Xarbia’s grasping, scything hand, we fired it at the ceiling.

  The pistol had been deafening. The Mastoff’s throaty discharge made it feel as though we were inside a steam hammer. The ­muzzle leapt with barking gouts of orange flash. Spent casings showered the car like hailstones, rebounding from every surface. The furious fire-rate chewed into the roof, puncturing solid panels, and busting through the cage mesh. Xarbia howled in anguish as the pummelling gunfire, almost point-blank, hit him multiple times. His arm snapped back and out as he rolled on the moving roof, trying to evade.

  Our shots also struck something structural. A gear, perhaps, or some cable support. Something snapped, and the entire car tilted significantly into one corner. We both reeled with it across the new slope, still clinging together. Misaligned now, out of its true fit in the tight ­channel of the shaft, the car, still descending at speed, began to rake the walls of the shaft with both its raised lower corner and, on the opposite side, its dropped upper corner. It did this with an ­unremitting screech of tortured, abrading metal, great flurries of sparks spraying from the grinding points of contact.

  The Mastoff was spent. At frantic cross purpose, Renner and I struggled to remove the bulk magazine and replace it with the spare from his belt pouch. Over the scream of the scraping descent, I heard Xarbia laughing again. I got the bulk-mag, turned it, and tried to slot it into the Mastoff as Renner attempted to brace the weapon steady.

  Xarbia tore the mangled lid of the car open, creating a hole large enough for his reaching arm, one shoulder, and his cackling head. He lunged down at us, talons carving close to our faces. There was no space to back up.

  The whole car lurched and shivered again. Xarbia, just inches from us, wore a sudden look of surprise as he was plucked back through the hole in the roof. Something happened above us, a frenzied turmoil of movement and violence. I heard blows traded, and weight shifting with such force, the elevator rocked, rattled and swung, scraping other travelling edges and corners against the passing shaft.

  Blood squirted down into the car at our feet. Then it dripped and came in other places. I broke from Renner, and stepped forward, staring up at the ceiling to try to make sense of what was happening. A torn white feather fluttered down through the hole towards my face.

  I could see them now. Sadoth Xarbia and Comus Nocturnus locked in visceral conflict on the roof of the car. They grappled and clawed at each other in transhuman madness, the doubled might of two Astartes clashing to kill. Xarbia’s talons dug into the angel’s white flesh, and blood leaked down him. Comus’ huge hands tore away the broken pauldron, and then swung it, striking Xarbia repeatedly in the side of the head. Xarbia punched, smashing Comus sideways into the car’s main hoist mechanism. Shredded feathers flew. The car’s roof began to buckle. Xarbia pinned Comus by the face, claws splayed, and tried to tear out the angel’s throat with his teeth. Comus grabbed him by the neck, began to throttle him, then slammed his face into the hoist ironwork that Xarbia had pinned him against. Comus kicked the Night Lord away. The kick threw Xarbia across the car and into the wall of the shaft. But the car was still descending rapidly, and the shaft wall, moving past, was like a rockcrete treadmill. The impact carried Xarbia up for a second, then flipped him entirely, end over end. He landed flat on the car’s roof, face down, blood streaming through the broken grille. The ferocious, abrasive impact with the wall had done great damage. His armour was scraped and chipped, and some parts had been torn clean off. In the strobing light, I saw his face pressed against the mesh, his pale cheek flattened and dimpled by the wire grille, one black-on-black eye staring down at me. I could not tell if he was alive or dead.

  It hardly mattered. Braced for balance, Comus stooped over him, grabbed him, and threw him up again, right over his head. Again, the Night Lord struck the rising, rushing shaft wall. His limp form spiralled, like a broken doll, cartwheeling, spun by the impact force. As he turned, one arm caught the moving, fast-running main cables of the elevator, and they spun him wildly yet again, counter-rotating him in a brutal, helpless flip. He str
uck the shaft wall again with bone-cracking force, but did so as we dropped past another floor level. I saw him hit the rockcrete lip of the passing floor, carried past it into the open mouth of the floor’s boarding chamber. I got one last glimpse of a leg, and one hand, draped lifelessly from the lip where he had come to rest, and then he was lost in the darkness above us.

  Shrieking, the lift rattled on. Comus looked down at me through the torn roof. He was covered in gore.

  ‘You came,’ I called up.

  ‘I smelled blood.’

  ‘Plenty of that today,’ I replied.

  There was a thump, a bang of gears. The elevator shuddered, and then jolted us all as it suddenly softened its descent.

  It came to rest.

  Outside lay some dank and squalid cargo dock, strewn with garbage. I yanked open the inner and then outer cage gates, and stepped out. I tossed the charm back to Renner and stood, with blinksword drawn, on watch, as he put it on and limped out after me. The angel tore open the mesh side wall of the shaft’s guard cage, and leapt down beside me.

  ‘Can you fly?’ I asked.

  ‘Not in here,’ he replied. He looked around. ‘There’s light ahead,’ he said, though my eyes could not discern it. ‘An exit to the street.’

  ‘Childeric Pass,’ I said.

  Just as she had promised.

  We turned to help Renner, and headed for the street.

  CHAPTER 25

  Be careful what you wish for

  I crossed the courtyard of the Academy Hecula as light rain began to fall. It was early evening. Lightburn walked at my side. There were few students around. The incident at Stanchion House the previous day had thrown the whole city into consternation, and certain curfews and restrictions had been put in place by the authorities. The news sheets were full of wild stories: of invasion, of gang war, of insurgency, of misadventure. All were wrong. I doubted the authorities knew what had left Stanchion House burning, or who, if anyone, had walked away from the calamity alive.