been a dream and he had never left that stretch of marshland.
But no. Iktinos was the enemy. Sarpedon was somewhere nearby.
Iktinos dragged N’Kalo to his feet and wrapped an arm around his
throat, hauled him into a corner and grabbed his bolt pistol off the floor.
The muzzle of the pistol was against the side of N’Kalo’s head.
Sarpedon stood in the middle of the gallery, unarmoured as he had
been in the courtroom.
‘Iktinos!’ yelled Sarpedon. He could barely believe that the first Soul
Drinker he had come across since his escape was engaged in fighting
the one Space Marine who had stood up for the Chapter at the trial.
Still stranger was that it was Iktinos, and that he had already found his
armour and weapons.
N’Kalo looked nearly dead. His face was barely recognisable as
belonging to a human. One eye socket was a gory ruin. Iktinos had
disarmed him, and now had him up as a human shield with a gun to
his head.
‘Chaplain,’ called Sarpedon. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I am surviving,’ said Iktinos.
‘N’Kalo is my friend. Let him go.’
‘The Soul Drinkers have no friends. N’Kalo is coming with me.’
‘Hostages will do us no good, Iktinos! You know that!’
‘Then it is for the best that I have him, not you. Do not seek to follow,
Sarpedon. There is only sorrow this way. Go to your brothers. They
are rearming in the archives.’
‘What are you speaking of, Chaplain? Whatever fate waits for us
here, are you not a part of it?’
Iktinos dragged N’Kalo towards a pair of double doors at the far end
of the hall. ‘Fight, Sarpedon! Fight on! That is what fate demands of
you. Stand by your brothers and die a good death!’
‘I know that someone has guided us here without my realising.
Someone has used me just as surely as Abraxes did. Is it you,
Iktinos?’
‘Goodbye, Sarpedon. A good death to you, my brother!’
‘Is it Daenyathos?’
Iktinos hauled N’Kalo through the doors. They boomed shut behind
him. Sarpedon rushed forwards, trying to cover the ground to the doors
before Iktinos could turn a corner and get out of sight.
Sarpedon heard the tiny sound of the grenade hitting the floor. He
threw his arms up in front of him, supernatural reflexes giving him the
warning a split second before the grenade went off in his face. The
doors were ripped off their mountings and slammed into him, throwing
him back across the display room, crashing through captured arms
and victory monuments.
Sarpedon skidded along the floor on his back. When he came to a
halt he brushed the debris from his eyes and saw the doorway was full
of smoke and rubble. Sarpedon had no way of following Iktinos.
Daenyathos. Rogal Dorn. The pilgrim ship’s suicide attack. Now
Iktinos, with an agenda of his own. Everything Sarpedon had believed
about the galaxy was falling apart, and he did not know how it could
end but with his death and the deaths of every one of his battlebrothers.
One thing that Iktinos had said made sense. Sarpedon had to fight.
He had to win a good death, and help his brothers do the same. He
owed himself that much. It was not much to fight for, but at that
moment it was all he had.
Sarpedon snatched up a sword from a fallen display behind him, and
struck out for the archives.
Sometimes a cold wind blew through the Phalanx. It was a trick of the
ship’s atmospheric systems, or perhaps a random current created by
the coolant pipes and superheated reactor cores of the engine sectors.
It howled now through the science labs and triumphant galleries
around the Observatory dome, strewn with wreckage. It picked up
shards of debris and flapped the Imperial Fist banners that lined the
way Chapter Master Vladimir had used to enter the now-ruined
Observatory of Dornian Majesty.
It stirred the dust in the Atoning Halls, whistling between the frames
of the wrecked torture racks and the bars of the empty cells. A few
Space Marines lay there, Soul Drinkers who had been caught in the
worst of the explosion and killed. Their battle-brothers had taken a few
bodies with them but some still lay where they had fallen, their torn
bodies still chained in their cells.
It turned the pages that lay on the reading tables in the archives. The
reading hall was held by only a handful of Soul Drinkers, among them
Librarian Scamander, the pyrokine who had not so long ago served as
a Scout. He crouched in the shadows cast by the dim light and the
enormous parchment rolls, waiting with the Soul Drinkers chosen to
stand watch with him. When the enemy came – for they had to be
called the enemy now, no matter what they had once been – they
would come through here, and in force.
The enemy was now gathering in the crew mess hall, which Captain
Lysander had designated as the staging post for the assault on the
Soul Drinkers. The Imperial Fists and Howling Griffons made up the
bulk of the force and Lysander had already had to deal with the
competing demands to be the first in against the Soul Drinkers. The
Phalanx was Imperial Fists ground and they had the say on who
should have the moments of greatest honour in the fight to come, but
Captain Borganor had demanded that his Howling Griffons be given the
task of charging into the archives and letting the first Soul Drinkers
blood. Lysander had agreed, for the Soul Drinkers were enemy enough
and he did not need vengeful Howling Griffons facing up to him as well.
Commander Gethsemar picked up a handful of rubble dust from a
collapsed wall, felled by the shockwave from the Atoning Halls
explosion. He let the dust drift on the wind, as if it was a form of
divination and from the eddies of the wind he could read the pattern of
bloodshed unfolding into the immediate future. His war-mask was a
death mask of Sanguinius, cast from the features of the divine
primarch as he lay dying, felled by the Arch-Traitor Horus ten thousand
years before. Sanguinius was unspeakably beautiful, and even stylised
in gold and gemstones the death mask cast an aura of supernatural
majesty that the Sanguinary Guard used as one of their deadliest
weapons.
‘What do you see?’ asked Librarian Varnica of the Doom Eagles.
Gethsemar turned to Varnica but his eyes were hidden behind ruby
panes set into the mask’s eye sockets and his expression could not
be read. ‘Such fates that intertwine here, my brother, are beyond any
of us,’ replied Gethsemar. ‘Long have our sages tried to unravel them.
Long have they failed. They strive even now, knowing that the future
will be forever hidden from them, but that to endeavour in such an
impossible task is its own reward. Our immediate task here is far from
impossible, but I fear a greater undertaking is revealed that will never
end.’
‘Explain,’ said Varnica. ‘As you would to a layman.’
‘Think upon it, brother,’ said Gethsemar. ‘Here Space Marine fights
Space Marine. Ther
e is nothing new about that. But will it be the final
time?’
‘I think not,’ replied Varnica.
‘Then you begin to see our point. What is a Space Marine? He is a
man, yes, but he is something far more. He is told that he is far more
from the moment he is accepted into his Chapter, when he is little
more than a child. His earlier memories may not even survive his
training. He may conceive in his own mind of no time but one where he
was superior to any human being. What might result from a mind so
forged?’
‘He has no doubt and no fear,’ replied Varnica. ‘Such alteration of a
man’s mind is necessary to create the warriors the Imperium needs. I
see it as a sacrifice we make. We give up the men we might have
become to instead serve as Adeptus Astartes. If you believe this is a
mistake, commander, then I would be compelled to differ with you.’
‘Ah, but there it is! Do you see, Librarian Varnica? It is true that what
we do to our minds to make us Space Marines is as necessary as
teaching us to shoot. But what sin is locked in to us through such
treatment?’
‘Brutality?’ said Varnica. ‘Many times Space Marines have gone too
far in punishing the Emperor’s enemies, and ordinary men and woman
have suffered as a result.’
‘Brutality is a necessity,’ said Gethsemar. ‘A few thousand dead
here and there mean nothing compared to the millions spared through
the intimidation of our foes that our potential for brutality allows. No, it
is a far deeper sin of which I speak, something not so far removed from
corruption.’
‘Corruption is a strong word,’ said Varnica, folding his arms and
straightening up. The threat was clear. ‘Then what is it?’
‘It is pride,’ replied Gethsemar. ‘A Space Marine does not just think
he is superior to the ordinary citizens of the Imperium. He thinks,
whether his conscious mind accepts it or not, that he is superior to
other Space Marines, too. We all have our way of doing things, do we
not? Would we all resist any attempt to change us, though violence
may be the only route doing so can take? So prideful we are that
Space Marines will never stop killing Space Marines. For every Horus
Heresy or Badab War, there are a thousand blood duels and trials of
honour brought about by our inability to back down. That is the real
enemy we face here. The Soul Drinkers were turned from the Imperium
by pride. It is pride that motivates us in destroying them, for all we talk
of justice. Pride is the enemy. Pride will kill us.’
Varnica thought about this. ‘Throne knows we all have our moments,’
he said. ‘But the mind of a Space Marine is a complicated thing. Can
such a simple thing as pride really be its key? And from the way you
speak, commander, I would imagine you have a solution?’
‘Oh, no,’ protested Gethsemar. ‘The Sons of Sanguinius all accept
that we are doomed. A Space Marine’s destructive pride is the only
thing keeping us all fighting, and we are the only thing keeping the
Imperium from the brink. No, it is our way to observe our in-fighting for
the death throes they are, to understand what we truly are before the
end comes.’
Varnica smiled grimly. ‘For all your gilt and finery, Angel Sanguine,
you are a pessimist. The Doom Eagles seek out the worst atrocities
the galaxy commits because we want to put things right. It will not
happen in any of our lifetimes, but it will happen, and it is the Space
Marines who will do it whether we are too prideful for our own good or
not. Why fight, if you believe all is lost no matter what you do?’
Gethsemar shook out his hand, and the dust drifted away on the thin
wind. ‘Because it is our duty,’ he replied.
Lysander stomped past, hammer in hand. ‘Daviks and the Castellan
are in position,’ he said. ‘Make ready. Two minutes.’
Gethsemar and Varnica broke away to join their own squads. The
main assault force, gathered in the mess halls, consisted of the Ninth
and Seventh Imperial Fist companies and the Howling Griffons’
Second. Varnica and Gethsemar’s squads were to follow the Griffons
in and, if Borganor was to be believed, clean up the mangled remnants
of the Soul Drinkers the Howling Griffons were sure to leave in their
wake. Lysander was walking the lines, inspecting the Imperial Fists
ranked up along the width of the crew mess hall. The rooms had been
built for the normally proportioned crew of the Phalanx and the Space
Marines could barely stand upright in it.
Whole planets had been broken by fewer than the two hundred
Space Marines that the Imperial Fists fielded for this battle. The
Howling Griffons were impatient, broken up by squads to be spoken to
in turn by Borganor. Lord Inquisitor Kolgo was there, too, at the back
of the hall with his Battle Sisters bodyguard, looking more like a battle
observer than a combatant in spite of his Terminator armour.
Varnica returned to his squad. Sergeant Beyrengar, who had been
elevated to squad command after Novas’s death, had gone through the
pre-battle wargear rites and prayers already. There was little for
Varnica left to do.
‘This is where the solution to that puzzle box lies,’ he said. ‘We have
pursued the Soul Drinkers, though we did not know it, from the
moment the heretic Kephilaes made the mistake of drawing our
attention. What we began then, we finish here. We know what the
Soul Drinkers are, and more importantly, we know what they are not.
They are not our brothers. When you face one of them through a haze
corruption, and excise him as you would any cancer of the human
race.’
‘Borganor!’ came Lysander’s yell from the Imperial Fists lines. ‘The
honour is yours!’
‘Gladly taken!’ cried out Borganor in reply. ‘Howling Griffons! Roboute
Guilliman looks on! Let us show him a fight he will not forget!’
The deck of the Phalanx shuddered as the Howling Griffons
advanced.
Scamander almost raised the alarm, but he realised that the silhouette
entering the reading room was multi-legged. He stood and saluted.
‘Commander!’ he said. ‘We did not know if you were still alive.’
‘I had plenty of opportunities to die,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘I failed to
grasp any of them.’ He shook Scamander’s hand. ‘How long do we
have?’
‘Not long,’ said Scamander. ‘The Imperial Fists are gathering to
attack us even now. They know we are here.’
‘And the plan?’
‘Hold the library stacks. Don’t die. Circumstances demand our
tactics be simple.’
‘I see.’
‘We have your armour, and the Axe of Mercaeno.’
‘Then at least I will not die here unclothed! That would be too
humiliating a way to go.’
Scamander smiled. For all the battles he had fought and the dangers
his psychic powers posed, he was still a youth. By the standards of
the Soul Drinkers, he was just a
boy.
Sarpedon headed through the reading room to the archway
Scamander had indicated. It led to a maze of bookcases and tables,
shelves of volumes stacked high to the ceiling, a thin layer of dust
covering everything disturbed by the armoured footprints of the Soul
Drinkers. Sarpedon glanced at the books – histories of Imperial Fists
actions, battle-philosophy, stories of individual Imperial Fists and their
deeds. Sarpedon was reminded of the chansons the Soul Drinkers had
once written, epic poems to glorify themselves. Sarpedon had
abandoned his own chanson when he had thrown Michairas, his
chronicler, out of an airlock during the First Chapter War. The thought
gave him an unpleasant taste in his mouth.
Soul Drinkers saluted as he passed. He saw battle-brothers he had
fought alongside for years. Some had argued against him, some had
sided with him in everything, but they had all followed him into the
Veiled Region. They had all accepted capture by Captain Lysander
and the Imperial Fists without a fight, because he had ordered it. And
they would die here, ultimately because he had ordered it.
‘Commander,’ said Sergeant Graevus as Sarpedon walked past.
Sarpedon returned his salute and noted the Assault squad that
Graevus had assembled from the Chapter’s survivors. He had picked
veterans, bloody-minded Space Marines who could be trusted to give
each centimetre of the stacks in return for buckets of blood shed by
their chainblades. Sergeant Salk was instructing his squad, and
paused to nod his own salute to Sarpedon. Sarpedon scuttled over
makeshift barricades of upturned tables, and squeezed through the
bottlenecks formed by the chaotic layout of the stacks. In the centre of
the book-lined labyrinth, he found Captain Luko standing at a reading
table.
Luko grabbed Sarpedon around the shoulders. ‘Good to see you,
brother,’ he said. ‘I thought the festivities would begin without you.’
‘I would not miss it for the galaxy,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘How many of
our brothers do we have here for the celebration?’
‘A little under sixty,’ said Luko. ‘A few were lost in the escape.
Pallas stayed behind. And others have gone missing. It is to be
expected, I suppose, but it is strange…’
‘Iktinos’s flock,’ said Sarpedon.
Luko took a step back. ‘How did you know?’