The Chapters Due Read online

  “Maybe,” agreed Grendel. “I’m just not sure whose idea it might have been.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Vaanes allowed himself to get captured because he still thinks he can be saved,” said Grendel. A sly look spread across his scarred features. “Or maybe Honsou here had Vaanes get himself captured to have a man on the inside?”

  Honsou ignored the insinuation and said, “Or perhaps Vaanes might be hoping for mercy. After all, if there’s one thing we know about Ventris, it’s that he always thinks the best of people. He thinks sinners might still be saved and that makes him weak.”

  “If he’s even still alive,” pointed out Grendel. “The Newborn shot him at point-blank range with a bolt round.”

  “He’s alive,” said the Newborn, crouching on the ground behind their group with its head cast down. “I can feel it. I want him to be alive.”

  “So where did you take that shot?” asked Grendel. “It seems a strange thing to do for someone who says they want to meet their maker.”

  “I want to meet him, but I want him to suffer first,” said the Newborn. “Without him I would not exist. Without his genetics, I would have been one of the Unfleshed, an aborted monstrosity left to die on Medrengard.”

  “Sounds like you should be grateful to him,” sneered Grendel.

  “Grateful?” roared the Newborn, surging to its feet. “My life is fragments. I am the broken shards of two people and I live in pain with every moment that passes. Grateful? No, Ventris cursed me to the agony of a life I didn’t ask for. He made me what I am and there is not enough pain in the world for what he will suffer in return.”

  “That’s my boy,” said Honsou with a crooked smile.

  TWELVE

  THE LAST RAYS of afternoon lit the distant fortress with a golden light, and though its walls were centuries old and all that remained of its gateway was a torn breach of collapsed stonework, Tigurius had never been happier to look upon the ancient shrine fortress of Castra Tanagra.

  Raised when Roboute Guilliman was young, its walls had withstood the fury of a greenskin invasion in the aftermath of the Great Heresy, and the primarch himself had stood upon its walls in defiance of the savage invaders. Built in a circular fashion, with one of its four towers built into the cliff-face, Castra Tanagra was an elegant structure, its curving walls twenty metres high and built from blocks of black marble quarried from the canyons of Prandium.

  Marneus Calgar led the survivors of the Caesar along the rocky valley towards the breach, the place where legend told that Roboute Guilliman had faced the brutish, ogre-chief of the greenskins and bested him with his bare hands.

  “Castra Tanagra,” said Severus Agemman in wonder. “I haven’t been here since I was young.”

  “You were never young, Severus,” replied Lord Calgar. “You were hewn from the rock of Macragge and given life in a thunderstorm.”

  Agemman smiled, the fatigue of the climb into the mountains falling away from him at the sight of the ancient fortress. “Aye, that’s true enough, my lord,” he said. “Just as you were there to put the bolter and blade in my hands.”

  Tigurius smiled to see the wonder on their faces, like children on the anniversary of their birth. Every neophyte of the Chapter was expected to make the pilgrimage to Castra Tanagra before his elevation to the fighting ranks, but the demands of war meant that few ever returned to study its majestic form.

  Its walls were carved with images from the first days of the Imperium, glorious, heroic frescoes depicting Astartes in their thousands crusading across the heavens with the Emperor at their head. Whatever images had been carved at the feet of these Astartes had long since been hacked away, and none now lived who recalled what had been removed. Tigurius remembered touching the defaced marble, seeing a faint echo of row upon row of robed mortals. Each had borne an item of artistic endeavour—a quill, a paintbrush, a scroll, a sculptor’s chisel or a composer’s baton.

  Why anyone would feel the need to remove such carvings was beyond Tigurius, but he remembered a potent sense of shame as he had visualised the now invisible rows of artists, writers and chroniclers.

  The pace of the march increased at the sight of the fortress, and within thirty minutes its walls loomed above them, gleaming like oil-sheened marble. Weeds and mountain gorse grew thick around the base of the walls, but none grew within the shrine fortress, as though an invisible barrier traversed the threshold. Darkness was drawing in, and the mountains were bitingly cold at night. They had precious little in the way of blankets or shelter, and though the Space Marines would need no such protection, the crew of the Caesar required protection from the elements.

  Though Castra Tanagra was a holy place to the Ultramarines, the damage done to it during its last battle had never been repaired, for Roboute Guilliman had decreed that it forever stand untouched as a memorial to those that had lost their lives here.

  Agemman cast a critical eye over the breach in its walls.

  “We’ll have a devil of a time defending this place,” he said. “That breach is too wide, and I’ll wager none of the tower guns function.”

  “I think you might be right,” agreed Calgar. “Yet we have the veterans of the 1st to stand upon its walls. What force in all creation could storm such a fastness?”

  “Spare me the flattery, my lord,” said Agemman. “We’ll hold the daemons at bay, but there is no way out of this valley if we should be overrun. We will either triumph here or we will all die. There is no middle ground.”

  “Then we had best not falter,” said Marneus Calgar, stepping over the tumbled rocks of the breach. Agemman went after him, and Tigurius followed the First Captain into the fortress. He clambered over the cyclopean blocks, feeling the weight of ages and history woven within them, but no sooner had he set foot within its walls than he felt a powerful sense that they were not the first to reach Castra Tanagra. “Wait,” he said, holding up a raised palm. “We are not alone.”

  WITHIN THE WALLS, Castra Tanagra was much as Tigurius imagined it had looked back in its heyday. The smooth marble walls of the inner keep were untouched by the passage of centuries, and the shimmering stained glass in its high towers shone vividly in the late sunlight. While the mortals gathered by the breach, 1st Company Terminators moved through the wide esplanade with their storm bolters at the ready, scanning for any threat and ready to eliminate it without mercy.

  “What do you feel?” asked Calgar, the ammo feeds on the Gauntlets of Ultramar clattering in readiness. “Who else is here?”

  Tigurius stretched out his consciousness, finding it difficult to gain a clear impression of anything within the walls. The gilded door to the main keep was shut fast; its brazen surfaces acid-etched with heraldic symbols of the ancient Legion’s many heroes.

  “It’s hard to be sure, my lord, but I sense the pulse of many souls within the keep.”

  “The enemy?”

  “I do not know,” said Tigurius, “but I do not believe so.”

  Calgar nodded to Agemman, who slammed a booted foot against the door. It slammed open, and a Terminator stomped through, a walking tank with his head lowered and his weapon raised. Another followed him, and another. Then Agemman went in, followed by Lord Calgar. Gunshots echoed within the keep, and Tigurius identified the weapons as Mark IV Konor-pattern lasrifles. A storm bolter fired, deafening compared to the lasrifle, and Tigurius heard screams. These were not battle shouts or the howls of daemons, but the terrified voices of mortals. Before any more shots could be fired, Tigurius pushed inside the keep, his enhanced vision easily piercing the darkness within.

  “Hold!” he shouted, his staff flaring with a brilliant white light. “Ultramarines! Stand your weapons down.”

  The first to reach the sanctuary of Castra Tanagra were not the enemy. They were citizens of Talassar.

  THE TWO RHINOS were halted in the shade of the trees at the edge of a deep gorge, their engines growling in protest. Clogged oil smoke jetted from their exhausts,
a toxin-laden breath that reeked of impurities and particulates. Scipio Vorolanus caught the tang of burning fat and oil in the mix, and knew these engines wouldn’t last long suffering such abuse.

  He could feel the prickling anger of Laenus beside him. The youngster had a gift for machines, and to see warriors who should have known better treating a precious Rhino with such disregard angered him greatly. Laenus was a fine warrior, but Scipio knew he was likely bound for the forge and a new career as a Techmarine.

  “Can’t they see the engines will seize up like that?” demanded Laenus, shaking his head.

  “We can only hope the rest of their discipline is as lax,” pointed out Scipio, watching as the crew doors in the side of the vehicles slid open and a squad of Space Marines emerged. Their armour was a vivid orange, slashed with tiger stripes and Scipio felt his lip curl in disgust at the sight of them.

  “The Claws of Lorek,” he hissed to himself. “Renegades.”

  He felt the same anger in the warriors of the Thunderbolts, their posture in the thick gorse surrounding the tumble of boulders becoming more taut and poised. Their hatred of these warriors was tangible, and Scipio saw more than one finger slide around a trigger.

  Hate could be a useful emotion in battle, empowering a warrior with strength and determination, but it was a careless master.

  “Hold,” he said, keeping his voice low and authoritative. “Wait until my signal. We do this as the Codex dictates.”

  At the mention of their primarch’s holy tome, his squad members released their triggers, and Scipio relaxed a fraction. Since leaving Herapolis thirteen days ago, they had moved directly eastwards, following the course of the Konor River as it flowed from the mountains onto the verdant forest plains of Espandor.

  Thin lines of smoke ran from one line of the horizon to the other. Iulius Fennion had led his men north-east, Praxor Manorian south-east, and Scipio had taken the direct route into the heart of enemy territory. The Bloodborn forces of the Corsair Queen were numerous and fierce, but they were incautious, and advanced as though they had already conquered the planet. Their armies were without vanguards, outriders or rearguards, simply a mass of soldiers, vehicles and nameless horrors moving toward Herapolis.

  The Thunderbolts had avoided conflict until now, for Scipio could not afford to draw attention to their advance until the Corsair Queen’s location was positively identified.

  His warriors were eager to be unleashed, and Scipio didn’t blame them; the behaviour of these fallen Adeptus Astartes spoke of colossal arrogance.

  Scipio and the Thunderbolts would make them pay for that arrogance.

  The Space Marines below had patrolled this way before, one of the few units based in the great river city of Corinth that behaved with a modicum of tactical sense. Yet they had allowed their routes to become predictable, for this route through the foothills around the city was the most obvious and least difficult to traverse. These warriors had made this circuit three times already in the past four days, always stopping here to indulge in some unclean ritual at a makeshift shrine they had set up inside the first Rhino’s hull.

  Eight warriors gathered around the open ramp at the rear of the Rhino, and a dark light, blood-red and somehow unclean, spilled out, bathing their armour in a russet glow.

  Scipio nodded towards Brother Helicas, who shouldered his missile launcher and eased himself around a boulder. The rest of Scipio’s warriors pulled their bolters in tight and braced themselves, left foot forward and right foot back, turned ninety degrees to their bodies.

  “Now!” cried Scipio, and Helicas stood to his full height to fire his missile launcher.

  The warriors below turned at the sound of the weapon, but by then it was too late. The missile’s motor ignited with a dazzling flare as it slashed downwards and slammed into the plastron of a tiger-patterned warrior. The warhead detonated within his chest cavity with a thunderous crack, hurling him into the Rhino and smashing the shrine to shards. Another warrior was cut down by the shrapnel of the dead man, his throat opened by a lethal fragment of armour.

  The other warriors scattered as the muffled echoes of the detonation faded.

  A precisely delivered volley of bolter fire hammered the six surviving warriors, and another two fell, cut apart by the explosive shells. Scipio revved his chainsword and burst from cover as another missile streaked downhill, exploding in the midst of the enemy. None were killed, but three were hurled from their feet by the blast.

  The warriors they had fought on the Anasta Road were corsairs, poorly armoured and badly led, but these warriors, for all their faults, were Space Marines. They began returning fire immediately, suppressive bursts on the timberline. One of Scipio’s warriors fell, his shoulder exploding in bloody shards as a round impacted beneath the protective pauldron.

  A dart of blue-hot plasma seared out from Coltanis’ weapon and burned through another enemy warrior, his body flopping to the gorse in two barely connected halves. The others ran for the cover of the Rhinos, but Scipio had anticipated that and angled his course to take him around the back of the nearest vehicle. Its engine rumbled as though enraged, gouts of reeking chemical smoke spitting from its corroded exhaust vents.

  Gunfire spat back and forth, and Scipio spun around the Rhino and all but collided with an enemy warrior. They stared at one another for a fraction of a second before Scipio brought up his pistol and put a round through the warrior’s eye lens. He fell back, but another was right behind him and swung a viciously toothed axe for Scipio’s neck. He ducked and the chainaxe bit into the iron hide of the Rhino.

  Scipio shot the warrior in the kneecap. The bolt ricocheted clear, but it staggered the renegade. He drove his sword up into the traitor’s gut, the adamantine teeth screaming as they tore through armour and bit the soft meat beneath. Blood sprayed around the blade as Scipio drove it deeper into the renegade’s body, feeling the spine within split.

  The warrior sagged against him, and Scipio hurled the body away. The last renegade threw himself at Scipio, but a withering storm of bolter fire blasted away his head and most of his torso as the Thunderbolts closed the noose on the Claws of Lorek.

  Scipio turned and nodded his thanks to his squad, ripping up a clump of grass to wipe the renegade’s blood from his sword blade. When the blade was clean, he sheathed it and removed his helmet to take a deep breath. The sooty, chemical stench of the Rhinos tainted the air, but it felt good to taste Espandor’s atmosphere once again.

  Swiftly, he set sentries around the engagement site and called Laenus over.

  “Did they broadcast any form of signal?” he asked.

  “No, my lord,” said Laenus. “None I could detect anyway.”

  “Good enough,” said Scipio, turning towards the Rhinos. One was a wreck, black smoke belching from its opened hatch, the other seething and rumbling like a bull facing the slaughterman. He ordered the destroyed Rhino pushed into the gorge, and beckoned his warriors over to him.

  The wounded warrior, Brother Nivian, had cut his mangled limb from his shoulder with a combat blade and carried it slung under his other arm.

  “Are you combat fit?” asked Scipio.

  “I can fight,” asserted Nivian. “Just give me a pistol or a sword.”

  Scipio nodded and handed over his pistol, taking Nivian’s bolter in return.

  “Laenus,” said Scipio, indicating the surviving Rhino. “Can you drive that thing?”

  Laenus stared at the Rhino, loathing written all across his face, as though Scipio had asked him to deface a statue of the Emperor himself.

  “It’s unclean,” he said. “But yes, I can drive it.”

  “Good, because we’re going to need it if we’re to stand any chance of getting any closer to Corinth.”

  He could see the distaste among the Thunderbolts at the thought of travelling within a vehicle of the enemy, but he cut off any objections by saying, “The Codex Astartes tells us that all warfare is based on deception, so we will make use of whateve
r opportunities the enemy provides us.”

  He could tell they still didn’t like the idea, but their likes and dislikes were immaterial. They had a mission, and if finding the Corsair Queen quickly prevented any rash decisions on the part of Captain Sicarius, then this was a discomfort he and the Thunderbolts were going to have to suffer.

  He chided himself for the disloyalty of the thought, and hammered a fist on the Rhino’s side.

  “Mount up,” he ordered. “We need to be in position by nightfall.”

  THE LEADER OF the civilians was a stocky man named Maskia Volliant, the praefectus of a small mining community named Tarentum. A gruff man wrapped in tough-wearing leather and furs, Tigurius thought he looked like a man used to hard work, his face deeply lined and his hands callused from years of manual labour.

  He had led his people to Castra Tanagra after witnessing the destruction of the lowland cities at the claws and fangs of the daemonic hordes, nearly six hundred men, women and children. They huddled in the shrine temple’s keep, hoping against hope that this nightmare would end.

  “We thought you were the daemons,” said Maskia. “We heard your approach and thought they’d come to finish us off.”

  “We are no daemons, fool,” snapped Agemman, angry that one of his suits of Terminator armour had fresh las-burns from the first volley of fire. “We are the very salvation you sought by coming here.”

  “I apologise, my lord,” said Volliant, cowed by the First Captain’s anger.

  “An understandable mistake,” said Marneus Calgar, placing a hand on Agemman’s shoulder guard. “And no harm has been done.”

  Agemman looked ready to dispute that, but a stern look from the Chapter Master stilled his tongue. The same Terminator whose armour bore a burn scar had been assigned penitential duties for lax targeting discipline. Fortunately his shot had been pulled wide at the last moment, and no one had been killed, but it was a shot that should never have been fired in the first place.