Iskavan shouted wordlessly, perhaps in pain, perhaps not. He was batting bolt rounds out of the air with the vibrating force weapon. He swept the eightfold blades down and the Marine barely dodged, the serrated edges scoring his armour. The Apostle drew back for a killing blow and Rafen emptied the gun into the Traitor’s free hand. At so close a range, the blaze of bullets ripped away everything from the middle of his forearm, shredding bone, muscle and blood into a mess of gelatinous fragments.
“Bastard!” The Apostle poured centuries of hate into the curse and slammed his crozius into Rafen. The blow was imperfect, borne from fury and without any semblance of control, otherwise it would have killed him instantly. Instead, the Space Marine was thrown thirty metres to slam into the side of a cargo unit. Most of Rafen’s torso armour was gone, the ceramite ripped away. Bunches of artificial muscle twitched beneath. He felt the full weight of his wargear as the thermal dissipaters in his backpack clogged and shut down. The Blood Angel’s head lolled. He had lost his helmet somewhere, and a wound over his brow gummed his right eye closed. Rafen tried to move, and felt broken ribs spearing his lungs from within.
Licking the gore spattered on his face, Iskavan approached, the chain linking the crozius to his arm rattling. “Ah,” he growled, savouring the taste, “I know this blood. I know you. From Cybele…” He raised the weapon again, this time for the final blow. “I gift you with the boon of pain,” he spat, “to feed the hunger of the gods.”
“No—” Rafen managed and then a bright red dart fell from the dark roof and landed amid the cooling steel.
Iskavan whirled to see a ring of liquid metal surge away from the point of impact. He hissed as he recognised the whelp that had borne the archeotech weapon inside the fortress. And beyond he saw more Blood Angels swarming down walkways and elevators, engaging in firefights with the few Word Bearers he had left to guard the approaches.
“You will injure no more of my brothers,” said Arkio, his voice carrying.
Iskavan roared a battle cry and sent rods of lightning at the youth. Arkio knocked them away with the Spear of Telesto and in a flash he was at the Word Bearer’s throat, the lance slamming into the crozius with shrieks of tortured metal. Iskavan’s weapon warped the air around it with redolent malevolence and the two warriors went back and forth across the slick decking, blood jetting from wounds where blades made brief contact.
Arkio struck Iskavan’s bleeding stump with the blunt end of the spear and he let out a sound that chilled the marrow. The Apostle savagely returned the attack and found a tiny gap in Arkio’s defence. A solid hit spun the Marine in place and he stumbled. Iskavan, infinitely older and more heartless than the young Blood Angel, did not hesitate to follow the blow and struck once more. The fan of blades locked into the cables and fastenings that held Arkio’s backpack in place and severed them. The compact fusion reactor and the back plate of his armour, all went away in a flood of hurt. Arkio fell in a heap, barely able to hold on to the spear. Unable to move, Rafen watched in horror as the Apostle drew the last reserves of psionic energy from within himself and channelled them into the humming crozius.
The crackling disc of knives fell on Arkio like the will of a vengeful deity—and it met the teardrop blade with a blinding amber flash. The Chaos weapon shattered with the impact and Iskavan staggered back. Rafen’s brother slumped as if the effort had drained him of any more fight. But the Apostle was still standing. Iskavan looped the broken chains that had tethered his weapon in one hand and threw it over Arkio’s neck.
Rafen tried to drag himself toward his brother, his chest burning. The Traitor pulled the chain tight and choked the life from the Blood Angel.
Arkio’s body buckled and shivered. A sound like crackling thunder issued out of him, and he flexed suddenly, the motion throwing Iskavan off him, snapping the chain. The Apostle tumbled away and landed atop the inverted claw grab, the metal fingers cutting into him.
But Rafen saw none of that. His eyes were locked on the brilliant white wings that had emerged from his brother’s back. Arkio turned; he was radiant. Golden haloes lensed the air around him, and his face glowed. The expression there was hawkish and noble—but as baleful as hell itself.
Arkio’s seraph wings threw him into the air with a single stirring, and he rose to hover over Iskavan’s form. With an uncanny economy of motion, he summoned the spear and it flew to his fingers. The Apostle saw his fate coming and tried to pull himself to his feet. Arkio nodded to him, a benediction of sorts, and then his fangs were bared in a terrible cry. He threw the spear like a thunderbolt and it pierced Iskavan’s black heart. Rafen watched a flash of gold light envelop the Word Bearer lord. When it faded there was nothing but the lance and ashes.
Time blurred, and then Arkio was at Rafen’s side, a gentle warm hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse. “Brother?” he said. “You will live. Trust me.”
Rafen’s heart hammered. The being before him, the face and the wings, the spear… It was no longer his sibling but the ancient artworks of Sanguinius given human form. Arkio knelt next to him, the very aspect of the great primarch reborn.
“What… are you?” He forced out the words, tears clouding his vision.
Arkio smiled, the beneficent expression of a million chapel windows there on his lips. “I am the Blood Angel, brother. I am the Deus Encarmine.”
Rafen tried desperately to shake his head, to deny it; but then the merciful void of unconsciousness swept up to take him, and he willingly submitted.
EPILOGUE
A messiah was created that day amid the people of Shenlong. In the depths of the factory, the low born joined the Blood Angels and the people of the upper cities, killing every last Word Bearer that dared to defile the planet with their existence. The lesser daemons that Iskavan had released were culled and their bodies were burnt in the huge fusion smelters that made the biggest of the Empire’s bombs. Across the city the voices of Astartes and civilian alike praised Arkio’s name. He walked among them, the ragged remains of his armour clinging to his chest and the great angelic wings unfurled behind him like magnificent white sails. The rise of the new crimson angel began on the ashes of traitors, as it was meant to be.
Rafen awoke to find Alactus standing over him. “Gently,” he said. “Your healing trance is not long ended.”
“Arkio…” Rafen began, coming to his feet. His head swam and there were darts of agony all over him, but his flesh felt whole. He knew this uncomfortable, vulnerable sensation from battles past. His bones were still knitting, and his altered skin and organs were working him back to full strength. By the colour of his new scars, he knew that little time had passed since the battle with Iskavan.
“The Blessed speaks today.” Alactus said. “He personally charged me with the task of standing sentinel here.” The Marine practically beamed as he said it. Rafen frowned; where was the man who had disputed Arkio on Cybele?
Rafen cast around for his equipment. “My wargear?”
“Ruined.” Alactus replied. “The tech-adepts have salvaged some elements, but it will not serve you again. Sachiel has ordered a fresh suit of armour be consecrated for your use.” He paused. “Your bolter survived intact. It is at the armoury.”
Rafen donned a set of robes, noticing the altered Blood Angel’s symbol on them, with the gold halo and spear. “What’s this?”
“The people have created it. They wear it to honour him.”
Anger crossed Rafen’s face and he tore the sigil off. “I’ll carry the mark of our Chapter and no other,” he growled. “Take me to Arkio.”
“That may not be possible. The Blessed is preparing to address the warriors of the reborn—”
“Then take me to the chapel!” Rafen broke in. “Or else get out of my way!”
Stele glanced over the balcony at the plaza. There was barely an inch of room out there, with the red shapes of the Blood Angels massing in silent, reverent ranks and the crimson sashes of the zealot army. Alread
y, the warriors of the reborn were swelling with new conscripts every day, more even than could fit aboard Bellus. He tapped a finger on his lips as he studied them. Soon, he would have Sachiel select a thousand of the most ardent to accompany Arkio on his return to Baal. A smile threatened to emerge as he wondered what the great Dante would say when confronted with such a sight.
He sensed Ulan’s approach and turned to her. She bowed low. “Lord inquisitor, I bring news.”
He raised an eyebrow. It would be something important if the astropath was unwilling to transmit it from orbit. “Tell me.”
“In the telepathic ducts I spied a remnant of the unauthorised signal that was sent from our vessel to Baal. It required several days of meditation to unfurl it, but I had some success.”
“What was said?” he asked in a low voice.
Ulan faltered. “That… datum was lost to me, lord. But I did intuit the code key of the Marine who sent it. Veteran Sergeant Koris.”
“Impossible.” Stele snapped. “Koris was deep in the hold of the black rage, I saw to that.”
“There is no doubt,” she insisted. “The code was his.”
“Who would dare use the vox of a dead man?” the inquisitor asked. “These Astartes would not desecrate the armour of the fallen, it is one of their most sacred tenets.” He fell silent as he saw a two figures making their way through the soldiery below, one in armour, the other hooded in robes. Stele knew instantly who he was looking at. “Rafen.” He glanced at Ulan. “Return to Bellus. I will have need of you later.”
The astropath departed and Stele returned to the chapel where Sachiel stood over Arkio, at once commanding and servile. Chapter serfs crowded around the Blessed, dressing him in a suit of hallowed artificer armour, anointing it with oils.
“Magnificent.” Sachiel breathed, a spellbound look in his eyes.
Arkio did not look up. His ice-blue eyes were fixed on the floor of the chapel, unfocussed as the symphonies of battles fought untold centuries past whispered in his ears. Instead of the flat shapes of the Blood Angels’ armour that he had worn before, Arkio was now adorned in sheaths that glistened like bright summer sunlight. The arms and legs were moulded to suggest broad skeletal bones or powerful muscles straining beneath the ceramite, while the chest was broad and chiselled. Wings cast in white gold that matched those rising from his back adorned the breastplate, framing a single tear cut from a giant ruby. The design repeated on his left shoulder, while his right bore the image of the holy lance. Every inch of the armour was layered with new engravings, the words of freshly created prayers to the reborn angel. The wargear fitted him as if he had been born to wear it.
“Vandire’s Oath!” The curse brought all eyes to bear on Rafen as he entered the chapel. “You wear the gold?”
Sachiel stepped down to block his path. “He does, Rafen.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” the priest growled. “You saw the emergence. You were there. Do you doubt your own sight?”
Rafen tried to find the words but they fled from him. He felt Stele’s iron gaze boring into him and his knees went weak.
“Rafen, you have brought this moment upon yourself,” Sachiel said, and he drew his reductor with one hand and the red grail with the other. “It is only by virtue of your blood kinship to him that I have tolerated your questioning of the Blessed’s divine nature, but now you have come to a moment of choice.” He held the pistol before Rafen’s face. “Choose now, brother. You must swear your loyalty or stand against him. Kneel.”
He hesitated and Sachiel shouted, loud as a gunshot. “Kneel!”
Before he was even aware of it, Rafen dropped to one knee and saw the grail near his lips. Dark fluid swirled within.
“By this oath, you pledge your life and your blood to Arkio the Blessed, Sanguinius Reborn, Lord of the Spear,” intoned the priest. “Your faith and your honour, until death.”
Rafen looked up, and he met his sibling’s gaze. There was nothing but lordly hauteur there, and the subtle menace of coiled violence beneath. If I die here, then the last dissention is silenced, he thought, but to take this oath…
Sachiel’s face twisted in a cruel smile and his finger tightened on the trigger. But then Rafen denied him, reached out and took a drink from the cup.
“By this oath,” Rafen began, “I pledge my life to Arkio the Blessed.” The blood was cold in his mouth, and sour like the ashen words he spoke aloud. He had denied it for too long, but now Rafen saw the truth of his path unfolding before him.
His brother was something strange and terrible, no longer a child of Baal, no longer sworn to their code. With the burning clarity of the rage racing in his veins, Rafen knew that soon a reckoning would come between Arkio and he that only one of them would survive.
Arkio smiled then, and it was awesome to behold. “Welcome, brother,” he said. “Welcome to the New Blood.”
BLOOD DEBT
BY
JAMES SWALLOW
They abandoned the groundcar at the port gate when blood began to drool from the ventilator grilles. The machine grunted and sighed, the glass in the windows popping as it shifted and changed shape. The two of them ran, boots hammering across the road, shouldering their way through the swarming throng of terrified people.
The woman surveyed the crowds with care. It was not the first time she had been in the thick of a frightened mass, and she knew the capricious nature of a mob’s animal mentality. With the right demonstration of force they could be cowed, but just as quickly they might turn murderous. These screaming, weeping, scrambling hordes were heavy with fear. They wanted so desperately to live, and yet she knew that to a man they would be dead or dying before sunset.
She threw a glance over her shoulder and her companion gave her a frown. He had never once looked back at the city they were leaving behind, not from the moment that they had embarked on their headlong flight. In the distance she could see where some of the taller hive towers had collapsed, parts of their structure altering on the molecular level, steel skeletons running like melted butter as the changes touched them. Buildings that had stood proud and defiant in the most Imperial manners were now shambolic, tattered things, flayed of stone and bearing their iron ribs to the sky. Dots ducked and wove in the air overhead—perhaps carrion birds, or maybe men and women like the ones she had killed to get the car, humans with newly sprouted wings still wet with amniotic fluid.
Hot exhaust fumes threw a sudden curtain of spent-fuel stink over them as a transport thundered upward, the spitting engines vibrating and complaining. She watched it struggling to gain height the cargo pods clustered beneath dangerously overloaded with refugees. Something inside broke with a cough of grey vapour, and the craft dipped sharply toward the ground. She grabbed her companion’s cloak and pulled him into the lee of a blockhouse just seconds before the ship crashed. The concussion blew down the crowd like felling timbers, and for long moments her hearing was replaced by a low, hissing whistle.
He stood first, his mouth moving even though his voice was lost to her.
“This way. Keep going.”
She nodded. Acrid chemical smoke pooled around their ankles as they ran, the rough winds across the landing fields catching the hems of their cloaks and flapping them back like sails. They wore the simple robes of pilgrims, the clothing common to the endless migrations of penitents that came to Orilan to visit the tombs of the Faded Lords; but no pilgrims carried the combat webbing or weapons holsters that they wore underneath. Other ships passed over them, climbing on spears of white fire toward the high clouds. The horizon was full of fleeing silver darts, desperate to escape the horror engulfing the planet.
In the first few hours of the outbreak, the vox-casts had described the effect as a virus, warning people to stay in their homes and avoid large congregations; but it quickly became clear that the changes were not the creation of some malignant micro-organism, nor were they limited to humans.
Ani
mals, insects, even plants began to shift and mutate. New forms arose on every corner, disgusting and loathsome things that sprouted horns or festoons of lapping tentacles. And then the inert and inorganic fell prey to the creeping aberration, as iron, stone and plastic warped beneath its touch. Some of the hysterical bulletins spoke about night-dark shadows wafting through the canyons of the city, leaving surreal and unnatural malformations in their wake. Sanity itself seemed to have fled Orilan, allowing things that were once corralled in nightmares to run wild in the cold light of reality.
She shook her head to clear it and blinked. Her companion stabbed a finger at a shifting cluster of people clinging to the edges of a boarding ramp.
“That one,” he said, “yes?”
“Yes,” she replied. Atop the ramp was a planetary lighter, an orbital shuttle of a crude but quite speedy type. Similar ships were employed across the Imperium and she knew that if circumstances required, she would be able to pilot the craft herself. The lighter wore the logo of a freight haulage agency that carried cargo and passengers from platforms in the orbital rings, to the surface of the planet and back again. She estimated that with enough reaction mass and a good course, the ship might get them to Orilan’s outermost moon. Where the ramp ended, a large servitor drone was blocking the open loading hatch, picking figures from the swarming throng with rough metal grippers. Valuables and items of all sorts, from coin bags to barrels of amasec and musical instruments, lay in a pile near its clawed feet. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty people between the two of them and the servitor. Her face set in a grim mask, the woman’s hand dipped into the slit in the folds of her cloak, fingers touching the careworn butt of an old but steadfast stubber pistol. She scanned the people, looking for a target that would make the most disruption when she hit it.
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