Alaric half-stumbled into the circle. This was his only chance. This planet would not get another shot at survival. If the Chaos horde continued to march under its leader, Sarthis Majoris would fall.
The G.o.ds had seen fit to send to Sarthis Majoris a champion of such presence that Alaric felt it forcing him back. His armour was impossibly intricate, covered in images of heaps of skulls around a burning throne. The champion"s face was the very image of arrogance, pale and perfect, with eyes like black diamonds.
"Leave us," said the champion. The armoured warriors around him took a step back to leave an open duelling ground around Alaric and the champion.
Alaric was in a low guard, eyes fixed on the champion"s blade.
"A Grey Knight," said the champion with a smile. "Khorne"s gaze is upon us. I shall give thanks to the warp that the corpse-emperor sent one of his very own daemon hunters to die beneath my blade."
"Let me help you return the favour, then," said Alaric, his words sounding like those of a stranger, "for you will be looking upon your G.o.d soon enough."
The champion smiled. His teeth were ebony black fangs. He lunged forward, and his sword was like chained lightning striking down at Alaric.
Alaric turned the sword aside and suddenly the duel was on. The champion didn"t just want blood. Blood alone was enough for the sc.u.m who threw themselves at the walls, but not for their leader.
He wanted to prove his superiority. It was why he existed. It was in proving his superiority that the champion offered up his prowess to Khorne the Blood G.o.d.
It was also Alaric"s only chance of survival. If the champion wanted a duel, then that was what Alaric would give him.
Alaric"s halberd spun around faster than any normal man could move, its head carving down at the champion. In response the champion"s intricate armour opened up like a b.l.o.o.d.y flower and tendrils of gore reached out to snare Alaric and drag him down.
Alaric cut through them and dived clear as the champion"s sword sliced down through the frozen earth beside him. More tendrils snaked around Alaric"s arms and lifted him up in the air. Alaric ripped one arm free and aimed his storm bolter down at the champion, fixing his aim on the champion"s face, still impa.s.sive with the certainty of victory.
The champion threw him down. Alaric hit as hard as a comet, cultist"s bodies splintering under him, and then the rock-hard earth shattered. He planted a hand on the ground and forced himself up from the mess of bodies, his other hand groping for his halberd.
He forced the clouds from his eyes. He was battered but alive. It took a lot to fell a Grey Knight. As long as there was life in him and a weapon in his hand, victory was in his sights.
The corpses were moving. The one closest to Alaric burst open like a seed pod, crimson blood flooding out. More bodies were erupting all around him and beneath him, sinking him in a swamp of gore.
The champion laughed. The blood flowed up from the bodies, forming shapes like blocks of melting crimson ice. The champion stepped up onto them as they created a bleeding stairway up into the air. He stooped to pick Alaric up by the collar of his armour and held him up like a scolded animal, like a sacrifice. The sword in his other hand was ready to slice Alaric open and let his innards spill out onto the battlefield in a sacrifice to Khorne.
Alaric kicked out and caught the champion on the side of the face.
The champion reeled, and Alaric grabbed the wrist at his throat, wrenching it around so that the champion let go. Alaric landed on the platform of blood that had formed below them, and was still rising up over the valley. Below him, he caught sight of the dark ma.s.s of cultists flowing around the right end of the line, which the Grey Knights had abandoned. The line was collapsing, the Hathrans surrounded and besieged. Alaric had sacrificed them for this chance at victory. He owed them the champion"s death as surely as he owed it to the Emperor.
Alaric rolled to his feet, halberd still in hand. The champion wiped a smear of blood from the cut Alaric had opened on his face, and confronted him.
"Duke Venalitor avenges his insults," spat the champion.
"A Grey Knight avenges his Imperium," said Alaric.
The sword and the halberd flashed. High above the battlefield on a platform of animated blood, Duke Venalitor and Justicar Alaric fought a duel so rapid and intense that the few eyes that looked up from the battlements below could not make any sense of the blur of strikes and parries. Tentacles of blood lashed around Alaric"s ankle and threw him to the b.l.o.o.d.y floor. Alaric"s leg kicked out and knocked Venalitor reeling towards the edge. Gashes and scars opened up in Alaric"s armour, some of them scored deep enough to draw blood. Alaric"s halberd blade rang off Venalitor"s armour as the champion of Chaos turned it aside at the last moment time and again.
Alaric lunged for Venalitor"s heart. Venalitor grabbed the haft of Alaric"s halberd with one hand, dragged Alaric forwards and brought an elbow down on the back of Alaric"s head hard enough to send the world black for a moment. When Alaric forced vision back into his eyes he was being held in the air over Venalitor"s head.
Alaric groped down trying to force a finger into the swordsman"s eyes. His hand pa.s.sed through writhing wetness, a nest of squirming b.l.o.o.d.y worms that opened up in place of Venalitor"s face. Somehow it retained enough features to smile as it threw Alaric down.
Alaric plummeted down towards the frozen ground behind the line. He realised a split second before he landed that below him was not solid earth, but the pile of frozen Hathran dead.
Weeks" worth of casualties shattered beneath him. His armoured bulk blasted a crater in the red-black ice.
Pain slammed up through his body. His head cracked against the rock-hard chunk of a soldier"s frozen corpse. The world of Sarthis Majoris seemed very far away. The voices he heard were from a different planet entirely, a different plane, which meant that he had sunk down through the earth into one of the h.e.l.ls to which the Imperial Creed maintained every sinner went.
Reality was slipping away. The pain of his battered body, so familiar to a s.p.a.ce Marine, was ebbing away, and he wished it would return to prove he was alive. The world, to his eyes, was dim and distant. The dawn was bleeding away to leave the valley dark.
Something inside Alaric reminded him that he was not supposed to simply die like this, that there was something else he had to achieve, but it slipped away even as his mind reached to grasp it.
He a.s.sumed that the cry of despair was the last sound he heard. It was raised from a hundred throats at once and it was so deep that it cut through the gunfire and the screams of the battle.
It was the sound of Hathran. It was a funeral song. Alaric had heard it sung over the same pile of dead in which he was lying.
They were singing their own funeral dirge. The Hathrans knew they were going to die. They knew it because they had seen a s.p.a.ce Marine, the Emperor"s warrior, defeated and thrown down from the heavens by the champion of the Blood G.o.d.
"No," gasped Alaric, "not here. Not now."
Sarthis Majoris swam back into focus. Alaric was lying on his face in a pile of shattered, frozen corpses. He looked around for his halberd and saw that it had landed point-down, impaled in the earth a short crawl away. Alaric got to his knees. He would retrieve his weapon and fight on, because that was the only way to victory, however slim the chance might be.
A weight slammed down on his back, forcing him back onto his face. He fought to turn over, and for a moment the pressure was lifted. Alaric rolled onto his back and the foot came back down on him.
Duke Venalitor had one foot on Alaric"s chest like a hunter standing over his prey. The magnitude of his arrogance was such that even the corpses recoiled at it, the blood in them heating up and melting at Venalitor"s presence. Fingers of blood reached up from the corpses to lick at the boots of Venalitor"s armour like the tongues of sycophants. Venalitor commanded all blood, even that of his enemies, such was the esteem in which the Blood G.o.d held him.
"My lord Khorne has a use for you," said Venalitor with a smile. He gestured at the Hathrans dying on the walls behind him. "Most of them are only good for fodder. Mankind provides little more than distractions for me now. However, there is much more you can do for the Blood G.o.d than merely die, Grey Knight."
Venalitor held out a hand, and Alaric felt the blood seeping from the cracks in his armour. He kicked out, trying to throw Venalitor off him, but his strength was gone. Ribbons of blood spiralled out of him and his vision began to grey out.
As Duke Venalitor drew Alaric"s lifeblood out of him chill pain filled him up in its place. Darkness fell all around him, and Alaric was not too proud to scream.
FOUR.
ALARIC SAT FOR a long time in the Cloister of Sorrows before Chaplain Durendin approached.
"Justicar," said Durendin. The Grand Masters have spoken with me of Chaeroneia. Your faith was sorely tested."
"It was," Alaric said. He was sitting on the drum of a collapsed column, typical of the cloister"s fallen grandeur.
The day is fine," said Durendin, indicating the magnificent sky of t.i.tan, the vast ringed disc of Saturn hovering over the void. "I shall sit with you a while, if I may."
The Cloister of Sorrows was open to t.i.tan"s sky, its atmosphere contained within invisible electromagnetic fields, and for Alaric to sit there among its age-worn tableaux was to allow the great eye of the galaxy to look down on him. The Emperor was a part of that gaze, always examining the soul of every one of His servants. Alaric felt naked and raw beneath it.
"I feel that there is more on my mind," said Alaric, "than Chaeroneia."
"And that is why you have come here," replied Durendin simply, "to be alone with your thoughts, away from the war gear rites and battle songs, and if a Chaplain were to happen along with whom you could share your thoughts, then so be it."
Alaric smiled. "You are very perceptive, Chaplain."
"It is merely the Emperor"s way of using me," replied Durendin. To be a s.p.a.ce Marine required an extraordinary man, but to be a Chaplain required more. A Chaplain of the Grey Knights was a rare specimen indeed, and the Chapter had precious few like him. He had to minister to the spiritual needs of soldiers destined to fight the most horrible of foes. The men of his flock had looked upon the warp and heard the whispers of daemons, and yet, thanks to him and those who had preceded him, not one Grey Knight had ever become corrupted by the enemy.
"Chaeroneia is a part of it, certainly, but I was troubled before that, ever since Ligeia."
Inquisitor Ligeia was the bravest person Alaric had ever met. The sunburst on his personal heraldry was in memory of her. She had lost her mind to the machinations of the daemon prince Ghargatuloth, but enough of her had remained pure to give Alaric the knowledge he had needed to defeat the daemon. She had been executed by the Ordo Malleus for her madness.
"Men and women like Inquisitor Ligeia will always die," said Durendin. That is the way it was even before the Great Crusade, and it will continue to be so long after both of us are gone. What matters is that we know those sacrifices work towards the goal of safeguarding the human race. Do you believe she died in vain?"
"No, Chaplain, far from it."
Then this galaxy seems too cruel for you?"
"If I could not stomach the things I must see then you know full well I would not have been selected for training at all," said Alaric, perhaps a little too harshly. "I just feel there is... there is so much for us to do, and I do not mean the battle. I have always accepted that the battle will not end, but there is much more to our fight than meeting the daemon with swords and guns. I have glimpsed the...
the realities behind it all. The words of the Castigator come into my mind unbidden. Ghargatuloth wove s.p.a.ce and time to create the events that summoned him back, and we were a part of it. I will fight to the end of my days, for sure, but the enemy is not just bodies to be put into the ground. It is a concept, perhaps it is even a part of us. I wish I could understand it, but I know no one can ever understand Chaos without becoming corrupt."
"So, you do not believe our fight is futile?"
"No, Chaplain. How could I, when I have seen the results of the daemon"s depravity? But our fight is only half the battle, and I wonder if the other half can ever be won."
Durendin looked down at his gauntleted hands. He was no stranger to the battlefield, and his Terminator armour, ornate gunmetal trimmed in a Chaplain"s black, was not just for show.
These hands," he said, "have fought that same fight for longer than you have been alive, Justicar, and not for one moment have I ever believed it was anything but the true and righteous purpose of any human being. What you say is true, however. The daemon is but one manifestation of the enemy and its violence is but one weapon of the warp. The Inquisition battles the plans of Chaos just as we battle its soldiers. Do you not agree?"
"How many inquisitors have we lost?" replied Alaric. Though we should not speak of it, Valinov was far from the only rogue in the Holy Orders, and he hid from us for so long. How many other heretics are wearing the Inquisitorial Seal? How many in Encaladus Fortress? How many directing the Grey Knights? I know it is our place to leave the thinking to the inquisitors, but how can we trust them if they delve so deeply into the corruption?"
Durendin sighed. He was an old man and sometimes, as then, Alaric had seen a reflection of those years in him. "I have led Grey Knights through every trial of the mind that Chaos can inflict upon them.
You are not the first to doubt, Alaric, and certainly not the first to glimpse the futility in the Inquisition"s task."
"It is not futile," said Alaric, "but I feel I am failing if I do not do more. The daemon is a symptom, not the disease. I want to be a part of the cure."
"I had these thoughts, myself," continued Durendin. "I spoke with my battle-brothers and the Grand Masters, and with the most knowledgeable inquisitors. None of them had the answer. In the end, I found the answer myself."
"And what was it?"
"You will find it yourself. You are going to the Eye of Terror, I hear."
"Yes, when my squad is reinforced."
"Good. Then that is your answer. The Enemy"s atrocities at the Eye know no bounds, and only men like us can stop him. Think about it.
In your moment of doubt, the Emperor has sent you to the bloodiest battlefields of the Imperium. That is no coincidence. Throw yourself into those battles. See the daemon and butcher him. See the forces of Chaos broken and fleeing. Take those victories and immerse yourself in them. Let victory blot out everything else. Glory in it.
Then the doubt will be gone."
That is what worked for you?"
"It did, Justicar. The enemy has made a grave mistake in bringing the fight to us. Men like you will punish that mistake. This I promise you, Alaric. You will become whole at the Eye of Terror."
"Thank you, Chaplain," said Alaric. "I must see to my squad. I have two new men and we must pray together before we go."
"That is good," replied Durendin. Your men"s spirits need counsel before they witness the Eye." The Chaplain looked up at Saturn, deep blue and streaked with storms. Below the planet was t.i.tan"s skyline, an irregular toothed band of darkness. The whole of t.i.tan had been turned into an ornate fortress, the moon"s surface carved deep with canyons and vaults, and many parts of it such as the Cloister of Sorrows had become ruined and near-forgotten. "I shall think here for a while. Saturn will set in an hour or so. It helps one think."
"Then I shall speak with you soon, Chaplain."
"Until then, Justicar."
Alaric stood up to leave. The way down through the half-ruined fortress beneath the cloister was long, and it would give him plenty of time to consider Durendin"s counsel.
"And Justicar?" said Durendin.
"Yes?"
"You are not dead." "That is good to know."
"Although it may be an idea to wake up soon."
"This isn"t how this conversation ended."
Durendin smiled. "No, it is not, but then, I am not really here. I am probably elsewhere at the Eye. Perhaps I am even dead. What matters is that you are alive, and you can still do something about the situation in which you find yourself."
"Then, what next?" asked Alaric.
"I cannot answer that, Alaric. I am not even here, after all.
However, I think it is very likely that your situation is not a good one."
The Cloister of Sorrows exploded in pain.
ALARIC SCREAMED.
The pain was howling from one of his shoulders. He was hanging from his wrists, which were chained above him. There was nothing else to bear his weight, and one of his shoulders had come out of its socket.
Alaric fought back the pain. He had been vulnerable for a moment and the pain had got to him, as it would to a man without the mental conditioning of a Grey Knight. His armour would normally be dispensing painkillers into his bloodstream, but he did not have his armour. He was naked. His war gear had been stripped from him.
As he fought back the pain, he began to hear again. A deep noise like an angry ocean boiled beneath him, and he could hear the clanking of vast machinery, mixed in with sobs and screams from broken throats. The smell hit him: blood and smoke, sweat and machine oil. His mouth tasted as if it was full of iron. He could not see, but that was a problem he would deal with in due time.
He forced his feet up, pulling up on his screaming shoulder.
Slowly, he pulled himself up so that his body was almost upside-down. His feet found the roof of the cage he was in. He pushed down with everything he had, and he heard the bars buckling.
The chain holding his hands came loose from the ceiling of the cage and Alaric crashed down onto the cage floor. He lay there for a few moments, catching his breath, gingerly testing the tendons of his shoulder. It was hurt, but it was nothing permanent. A s.p.a.ce Marine healed quickly. He lay on his side and let the joint slide back into place. The gunshot of pain that accompanied it was profound, but there was something triumphant in the fact that he could feel at all.
Alaric reached up and found a blindfold tied around his face. He pulled it away and blinked a couple of times as his augmented eyes reacted to the sudden light.
His cage was one of several hundred suspended from a great iron column down which poured dozens of waterfalls of blood. These fed the sea of blood below him, in which writhed thousands of bodies, slick with gore. It was impossible to tell if they were in agony, or in some ecstasy of worship. Daemons waded among them, hulking things with red-black skin, lashing the bleeding bodies with their whips. Corpses and parts of corpses bobbed everywhere, fished out and carried away by scuttling alien creatures with lopsided, tumoured forms.