Tarvitz made his way through the ship, pa.s.sing wondrous s.p.a.ces that would make the shipwrights of Jupiter weep with awe, until he reached the Hall of Rites, the circular chamber where the Emperor"s Children underwent the oaths and ceremonies that tied them to their Legion. Compared to the rest of the ship, the hall was dark, but it was no less magnificent: marble columns supporting a distant domed ceiling, and ritual altars of marble glittering in pools of shadow at its edges.
Fulgrim"s Chosen had pledged themselves to the primarch"s personal charge here, and he had accepted his appointment as captain before the Altar of Service. The Hall of Rites replaced opulence with gravity, and seemed designed to intimidate with the promise of knowledge hidden from all but the Legion"s most exalted officers.
Tarvitz paused on the threshold, seeing the unmistakable shape of Ancient Rylanor, his dreadnought body standing before the Altar of Devotion.
*Enter," said Rylanor in his artificial voice.
Tarvitz cautiously approached the Ancient, his blocky outline resolving into a tank-like square sarcophagus supported on powerful piston legs. The dreadnought"s wide shoulders mounted an a.s.sault cannon on one arm and a huge hydraulic fist on the other. Rylanor"s body rotated slowly on its central axis to face Tarvitz, turning from the Book of Ceremonies that lay open on the altar.
*Captain Tarvitz, why are you not with your warriors?" asked Rylanor. The vision slit that housed his ocular circuits regarded Tarvitz without emotion.
*They can celebrate well enough without me," said Tarvitz. *Besides, I have sat through one too many renditions of Lucius"s tales to think I"ll miss much."
*It is not to my taste either," said Rylanor, a grating bark of electronic noise sounding from the dreadnought"s vox-unit. At first Tarvitz thought the Ancient had developed a fault, until he realized that the sound was Rylanor"s laughter.
Rylanor was the Legion"s Ancient of Rites, and when not on the battlefield he oversaw the ceremonies that marked the gradual ascent of an Astartes from novice to Chosen of Fulgrim.
Decades before, Rylanor had been wounded beyond the skill of the Legion"s apothecaries while fighting the duplicitous eldar, and had been interred in a dreadnought war machine that he might continue to serve. Along with Lucius and Tarvitz, Rylanor was one of the senior officers being sent down to take the Choral City"s palace complex.
*I wish to speak with you, revered Ancient," said Tarvitz, *about the drop."
*The drop is in a few hours," replied Rylanor. *There is little time."
*Yes, I have left it too late and for that I apologize, but it concerns Captain Odovocar."
*Captain Odovocar is dead, killed on Isstvan Extremis."
*And the Legion lost a great warrior that day," nodded Tarvitz. *Not only that, but he was to function as Eidolon"s senior staff officer aboard the Andronius, relaying the commander"s orders to the surface. With his death there is no one to fulfill that role."
*Eidolon is aware of Odovocar"s loss. He will have an alternative in place."
*I request the honour of fulfilling that role," said Tarvitz solemnly. *I knew Odovocar well and would consider it a fitting tribute to finish the work he began on this campaign."
The dreadnought leaned close to Tarvitz, the cold metallic machine unreadable, as the crippled warrior within decided Tarvitz"s fate.
*You would renounce the honour of your place in the speartip to take over his duties?"
Tarvitz looked into Rylanor"s vision slit, struggling to keep his expression neutral. Rylanor had seen everything the Legion had gone through since the beginning of the Great Crusade and was said to be able to perceive a lie the instant it was told.
His request to remain aboard the Andronius was highly unusual and Rylanor would surely be suspicious of his motives for not wanting to go into the fight. But when Tarvitz had learned that Eidolon was not leading the speartip personally, he knew there had to be a reason. The lord commander never pa.s.sed up the opportunity to flaunt his martial prowess and for him to appoint another in his stead was unheard of.
Not only that, but the deployment orders Eidolon had issued made no sense.
Instead of the normal, rigorously regimented order of battle that was typical of an Emperor"s Children a.s.sault, the units chosen to make the first attack appeared to have been picked at random. The only thing they had in common was that none were from Chapters led by Eidolon"s favoured lord commanders. For Eidolon to sanction a drop without any of the warriors belonging to those lord commanders was unheard of and grossly insulting.
Something felt very wrong about this drop and Tarvitz couldn"t shake the feeling that there was some grim purpose behind the selection of these units. He had to know what it was.
Rylanor straightened and said, *I shall see to it that you are replaced. This is a great sacrifice you make, Captain Tarvitz. You do the memory of Odovocar much honour with it."
Tarvitz fought to hide his relief, knowing that he had taken an unthinkable risk in lying to Rylanor. He nodded and said, *My thanks, Ancient"
*I shall join the troops of the speartip," said the dreadnought. *Their feasting will soon be complete and I must ensure that they are ready for battle."
*Bring perfection to the Choral City," said Tarvitz.
*Guide us well," replied Rylanor, his voice loaded with unspoken meaning. Tarvitz was suddenly certain that the dreadnought wanted Tarvitz to remain on the ship.
*Do the Emperor"s work, Captain Tarvitz," ordered Rylanor.
Tarvitz saluted and said, *I will," as Rylanor set off across the Hall of Rites towards the banquet, his every step heavy and pounding.
Tarvitz watched him go, wondering if he would ever see the Ancient again.
THE DORMITORIES TUCKED into the thick walls running the length of the gantry were dark and hot, and from the doorway Mersadie could see down into the engine compartment where the crew were indistinguishable, sweating figures who worked in the infernal heat and ruddy glow of the plasma reactors. They hurried across gangways that stretched between the t.i.tanic reactors and clambered along ma.s.sive conduits that hung like spider webs in the h.e.l.lish gloom.
She dabbed sweat from her brow at the heat and close confines of the engine s.p.a.ce, unused to the searing air that stole away her breath and left her faint.
*Mersadie," said Sindermann coming to meet her along the gantry. The iterator had lost weight, his dirty robes hanging from his already spare frame, but his face was alight with the relief and joy of seeing her. The two embraced in a heartfelt hug, both grateful beyond words to see each other. She felt tears p.r.i.c.king her eyes at the sight of the old man, unaware until this moment of how much she had missed him.
*Kyril, it"s so good to see you again," she sobbed. *You just vanished. I thought they"d got to you. I didn"t know what had happened to you."
*Hush, Mersadie," said Sindermann, *it"s all right. I"m so sorry I couldn"t send word to you at the time. You must understand that I had no choice, I would have done everything I could to keep you out of this, but I don"t know what to do any more. We can"t keep her down here forever."
Mersadie looked through the doorway of the dormitory room they stood outside, wishing she had the courage to believe as Kyril did. *Don"t be ridiculous, Kyril. I"m glad you made contact, I thought... I thought Maloghurst or Maggard had killed you."
*Maggard very nearly did," said Sindermann, *but the saint saved us."
*She saved you?" asked Mersadie. *How?"
*I don"t know exactly, but it was just like in the Archive Chamber. The power of the Emperor was in her. I saw it, Mersadie, just as sure as you"re standing here before me. I wish you could have seen it."
*I wish that too," she said, surprised to find that she meant it.
She entered the dormitory and stared down at the still form of Euphrati Keeler on the thin cot bed, looking for all the world as if she was simply sleeping. The small room was cramped and dirty, with a thin blanket spread on the deck beside the bed.
Winking starlight streamed in through a small porthole vision block, something greatly prized this deep in the ship, and without asking, she knew that someone had happily volunteered to give up their prized room for the use of the *saint" and her companion.
Even down here in the dark and the stink, faith flourished.
*I wish I could believe," said Mersadie, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of Euphrati"s chest.
Sindermann said, *You don"t?"
*I don"t know," she said, shaking her head. *Tell me why I should? What does believing mean to you, Kyril?"
He smiled and took her hand. *It gives me something to hold on to. There are people on this ship who want to kill her, and somehow... don"t ask me how, I just know that I need to keep her safe."
*Are you"re not afraid?" she asked.
*Afraid?" he said. *I"ve never been more terrified in my life, my dear, but I have to hope that the Emperor is watching over me. That gives me strength and the will to face that fear."
*You are a remarkable man, Kyril."
*I"m not remarkable, Mersadie," said Sindermann, shaking his head. *I was lucky. I saw what the saint did, so faith is easy for me. It"s hardest for you, for you have seen nothing. You have to simply accept that the Emperor is working through Euphrati, but you don"t believe, do you?"
Mersadie turned from Sindermann and pulled her hand from his, looking through the porthole at the void of s.p.a.ce beyond. *No. I can"t. Not yet."
A white streak shot across the porthole like a shooting star.
Another followed it, and then another.
*What"s that?" she asked.
Sindermann leaned over to get a better look through the porthole.
Even through his exhaustion, she could see the strength in him that she had previously taken for granted and she blink-clicked the image, capturing the defiance and bravery she saw in his features.
*Drop-pods," he said, pointing at a static gleaming object stark against the blackness and closer to Isstvan III. Tiny sparks began raining from its underside towards the planet below.
*I think that"s the Andronius, Fulgrim"s flagship," said Sindermann. *Looks like the attack we"ve been hearing about has begun. Imagine how it would be if we could watch it unfolding."
Euphrati groaned and the attack on Isstvan III was forgotten as they slid across to sit beside her. Mersadie saw Sindermann"s love for her clearly as he mopped her brow, her skin so clean that it practically shone.
For the briefest moment, Mersadie saw how people could believe Euphrati was miraculous; her body so pale and fragile, yet untouched by the world around her. Mersadie had known Keeler as a gutsy woman, never afraid to speak her mind or bend the rules to get the magnificent picts for which she was rightly famed, but now she was something else entirely. *Is she coming round?" asked Mersadie. *No," said Sindermann sadly. *She makes noises, but she never opens her eyes. It"s such a waste. Sometimes I swear she"s on the brink of waking, but then she sinks back down into whatever h.e.l.l she"s going through in her head." Mersadie sighed and looked back out into s.p.a.ce. The pinpoints of light streaked in their hundreds towards Isstvan III.
As the speartip was driven home, she whispered, *Loken..."
THE CHORAL CITY was magnificent.
Its design was a masterpiece of architecture, light and s.p.a.ce so wondrous that Peeter Egon Momus had begged the Warmaster not to a.s.sault so brutally. Older by millennia than the Imperium that had come to claim it in the name of the Emperor, its precincts and thoroughfares were soon to become blood-slick battlefields.
While the juggernaut of compliance had made the galaxy a sterile, secular place, the Choral City remained a city of the G.o.ds.
The Precentor"s Palace, a dizzying creation of gleaming marble blades and arches that shone in the sun, opened like a vast stone orchid to the sky and the polished granite of the city"s wealthiest districts cl.u.s.tered around it like worshippers. Momus had described the palace as a hymn to power and glory, a symbol of the divine right by which Isstvan III would be ruled.
Further out from the palace and beyond the architectural perfection of the Choral City, vast multi-layered residential districts sprawled. Connected by countless walkways and bridges of gla.s.s and steel, the avenues between them were wide canyons of tree-lined boulevards in which the citizens of the Choral City lived.
The city"s industrial heartland rose like climbing skeletons of steel against the eastern mountains, belching smoke as they churned out weapons to arm the planet"s armies. War was coming and every Isstvanian had to be ready to fight.
But no sight in the Choral City compared to the Sirenhold.
Not even the magnificence of the palace outshone the Sirenhold, its towering walls defining the Choral City with their immensity. The brutal battlements diminished everything around them, and the sacred fortress of the Sirenhold humbled even the snow-capped peaks of the mountains. Within its walls, enormous tomb-spires reached for the skies, their walls encrusted with monumental sculptures that told the legends of Isstvan"s mythical past.
The legends told that Isstvan himself had sung the world into being with music that could still be heard by the blessed Warsingers, and that he had borne countless children with whom he populated the first ages of the world. They became night and day, ocean and mountain, a thousand legends whose breath could be felt in every moment of every day in the Choral City.
Darker carvings told of the Lost Children, the sons and daughters who had forsaken their father and been banished to the blasted wasteland of the fifth planet, where they became monsters that burned with jealousy and raised black fortresses from which to brood upon their expulsion from paradise.
War, treachery, revelation and death; all marched around the Sirenhold in endless cycles of myth, the weight of their meaning pinning the Choral City to the soil of Isstvan III and infusing its every inhabitant with their sacred purpose.
The G.o.ds of Isstvan III were said to sleep in the Sirenhold, whispering their murderous plots in the nightmares of children and ancients.
For a time, the myths and legends had remained as distant as they had always been, but now they walked among the people of the Choral City, and every breath of wind shrieked that the Lost Children had returned.
Without knowing why, the populace of Isstvan III had armed and unquestioningly followed the orders of Vardus Praal to defend their city. An army of well-equipped soldiers awaited the invasion they had long been promised was coming in the western marches of the city, where the Warsingers had sung a formidable web of trenches into being.
Artillery pieces parked in the gleaming canyons of the city pointed their barrels westwards, set to pound any invaders into the ground before they reached the trenches. The warriors of the Choral City would then slaughter any that survived in carefully prepared crossfire.
The defenses had been meticulously planned, protecting the city from attack from the west, the only direction in which an invasion could be launched.
Or so the soldiers manning the defenses had been told.
The first omen was a fire in the sky that came with the dawn.
A scattering of falling stars streaked through the blood-red dawn, burning through the sky like fiery tears.
The sentries in the trenches saw them falling in bright spears of fire, the first burning object smashing into the trenches amid a plume of mud and flame.
At the speed of thought, the word raced around the Choral City that the Lost Children had returned, that the prophecies of myth were coming true.
They were proven right when the drop-pods burst open and the Astartes of the Death Guard Legion emerged.
And the killing began.
PART TWO.
THE CHORAL CITY.
EIGHT.
Soldiers from h.e.l.l Butchery Betrayal *THIRTY SECONDS!" YELLED Vipus, his voice barely audible over the screaming jets as the drop-pod sliced through Isstvan III"s atmosphere. The Astartes of Locasta were bathed in red light and for a moment Loken imagined what they would look like to the people of the Choral City when the a.s.sault began a warriors from another world, soldiers from h.e.l.l.
*What"s our landing point looking like?" shouted Loken.