[Ultramarines 6] Chapters Due - Graham McNeill Read online

  Closer to the plinth was Votheer Tark, the master of a host of battle engines crafted on a world once sacred to the priests of the Mechanicus, but now taken by their dark kin. Its foundries crafted cursed iron tempered with the souls of a thousand sacrifices, and machines fed on the ground-up bodies of slaves shaped them with bloodstained hammers into dread vehicles for their dark master. Tark himself was little more than a fragmented scrap of meat and brain hung together in a sloshing amniotic tank. The last time Honsou had seen him, he was marching up the rubble slope of a breach in the Gauntlet Bastion as part of a monstrous spider-like machine with mortar spines. His organic components were now fitted to a long, multi-limbed chassis of blades and stalk-like claw-arms that looked absurdly fragile, but probably wasn’t.

  Honsou passed through ranks of pirate captains and renegades of no particular note, paying them no mind until he reached the Blade dancers once led by Notha Etassay. The champion of the Dark Prince had fought his last battle on the Indomitable against an Imperial assassin, an incredible fight of deadly blades that ended badly for Etassay.

  Honsou won Etassay’s warband on New Badab, and had found his addiction to sensation irritating, but now that the champion was gone, he found he actually missed the lightness of his words. Before he could pass the Blade dancers, a woman in rippling silver armour that covered her entire body stepped from their ranks with a graceful pirouette.

  Her helmet, which was moulded in a perfectly androgynous fashion, unfolded with liquid sweeps, as though it were not truly solid, and Honsou was reminded of the gleaming texture of the arm he had stolen from the Ultramarines sergeant. The woman’s features were black and finely sculpted, like a perfect statue of onyx. Incongruously yellow eyes met his stare, and as her helmet smoothly retracted into the armour at her shoulder, her cropped golden hair was revealed. “Honsou,” said the woman, and her voice was like a breath of perfumed air.

  “Who are you, and why should I care?” he answered.

  “I am Xiomagra,” said the warrior woman. “I am the new blademistress.”

  “Good for you,” said Grendel, pushing past her. Without seeming to move, the woman was suddenly holding a pair of blades, one silver, one black across Grendel’s throat. One twist of her wrists would see him decapitated, and Honsou was almost tempted to let her.

  “Those are Etassay’s swords,” he said, recognising the ornate, inscribed blades and decorative pommels.

  “They are the Blade dancers’ swords,” corrected Xiomagra. “When one master dies, the next takes up the blades. Etassay died at your side, and the Law of the Swords compels me to be your shadow until such time as I can repay that debt.”

  “I already have a bodyguard,” said Honsou, jerking his thumb at the Newborn.

  Xiomagra sneered. “That bastard by-blow? I should kill the abomination now.”

  “I really wouldn’t,” advised Honsou. “It’s tougher than it looks.”

  Xiomagra released Grendel and Honsou grabbed his lieutenant’s arm before he could reach for his pistol.

  “Not now,” said Honsou, and Grendel gave him a stare of such ferocity that he felt sure the warrior was going to strike him down. Grendel shrugged off his arm and turned to Xiomagra, drawing a finger across his scarred throat.

  Honsou caught up with him and said, “Kill her later, but for now we need her.”

  “Fair enough,” said Grendel, glancing back at the warrior woman. “I can wait.”

  With the mortal champions behind him, Honsou finally reached the plinth where the elite of this gathering were waiting.

  The Iron Warriors had the honour of standing closest to the wide plinth, and Honsou felt a strange sense of pride in their upright bearing and the proud swagger of their status. These were the pre-eminent warriors of this host, though many jostled for that position. Skull-visored helms turned to him as he approached and he felt the wary respect of his warriors.

  Iron Warriors seldom loved their commanders, and a leader’s death often came at the hands of his subordinates. Bitter jealousy and twisted ambition was endemic to the Iron Warriors, but Honsou wouldn’t have it any other way. Such violent competition bred ruthless warriors to whom the notion of conscience and honour were utterly alien.

  Alongside the Iron Warriors were the warlords and champions of the renegade Astartes who had joined his swelling army en route to Ultramar: Neshan Voor’s Claws of Lorek and Muscara’s Skulltakers. Lacking the cohesion of the Iron Warriors, Honsou had little respect for them, fierce fighters though they undoubtedly were. Individuals from numerous renegade Chapters bulked out their numbers: the Apostles of Mithras, the Death Shadows and even a few of more illustrious pedigree. Honsou spotted three warriors who were clearly Space Wolves, perhaps those selfsame traitors who had turned on their brethren aboard the Wolf of Fenris.

  He smiled to think of treachery in such a Chapter and mounted the steps to the plinth as the air grew dense and scratchy, like old pict film dredged from a forgotten basement and streamed on a broken player.

  The heavy tread of iron feet cracking marble announced the arrival of M’kar and a palpable sense of excitement filled the chamber as the daemon-Dreadnought emerged from the darkness to preach to its followers.

  “Sons of Chaos, we have taken the first steps on a glorious road!” began M’kar, its arms raised in the air. Dark radiance sweated from its form, mighty and swollen with warp energy, as the daemon’s true form flickered in and out of focus, as though seeking to overwhelm the mechanical shell it had been forced to occupy.

  Honsou watched it speak, the rasping, deathly tones crashing together like rusted iron bars. Looking out over the adoring faces of warriors, killers, monsters and xenos creatures, he was momentarily taken aback as he realised the churning sensation in his gut was hatred for the daemon-thing he had freed from the warp-core of the Indomitable.

  He had thought to use it as a weapon, but the weapon turned out to have its own agenda, and had more or less taken over his army without him even being aware of it. He shouldn’t have been surprised, for it was a prince of the immaterium, a being older than any living thing in the galaxy, and the simple-minded would always see such beings as objects of worship. Not only that, but a daemon prince would always seek to be the master of whatever host it was summoned into.

  A being of such power could no more be a follower than Honsou.

  He was not normally given to jealousy, for he had no need of his warriors’ love. A commander could be hated or loved, but never both, and Honsou would far rather be hated. So long as his warriors killed the enemy, he cared nothing for their affections. That was the Iron Warriors’ way and he saw no need to change it, but to have his own army stolen from under him was something he had never considered.

  Did it matter though? Two of Guilliman’s worlds were bloody charnel houses, which was better than any foe had managed in ten thousand years, even the Great Devourer. More would fall before M’kar’s daemonic army and the power of Honsou’s warriors.

  So did it matter whose hand was on the tiller?

  Absolutely. This was his army, his dark crusade and his vengeance.

  Honsou felt his emotions threatening to get the better of him, and he bit the inside of his mouth bloody to control his rising fury. He forced himself to listen to the daemon prince’s proselytising, feeling his contempt for it as acrid bile in the back of his throat.

  M’kar spoke with the passion of a zealot with utter faith and certainty in its words. It spoke with a fervour Honsou found distasteful. He had never felt any overwhelming urge to pray to any of the warp gods, save for the power they could grant. Pacts were made and deals were struck, but worship… leave that to fools and the desperate.

  “The worlds of Ultramar are ripe for the warriors of the Eternal Powers to sweep the infidels to their doom!” bellowed M’kar. “For too long the scions of Guilliman have flaunted their superiority over their fellows, for too long have they held a place of pre-eminence they do not deserve. You are all warriors
chosen by powers greater than you can comprehend to do their bidding. You shall march upon the silver citadels of the unclean and purge their worlds with fire and the unbridled majesty of the warp!”

  M’kar’s seething red form billowed, and dark wings of shadow flared at its back, smoking and leaving the reek of burned air in their wake. Its bestial face twisted in rage, a boiling light surging in its maw as its hatred tainted the air with the taste of hot metal.

  “You are soldiers on a holy war, warriors tasked to bring the true powers of the universe to those who have turned their back on what it means to be alive. Trapped in lives of one dimension they deny those who would hear the holy word of Chaos and hunt them down. Which of you has not felt the heat of their unholy pursuit? Which of you would not turn your blades and guns upon your persecutors? The universe belongs to the Eternal Powers and all who do not praise their glory and sacrifice unto them what is their right and proper tribute are heretics whose only fate is to die screaming in torment!”

  The gathered warlords waved a thousand blades in the air and answered with a mix of howling machine voices, alien screeches and human bellows of fealty. The Hall of Ancients shook with the violence of their affirmation, and its walls had never known such venom.

  “I didn’t think warp creatures were big on inspiring speeches,” hissed Ardaric Vaanes, leaning in close to Honsou. The howling almost swallowed his words.

  Honsou shrugged. “Not any I’ve known. The legends tell that M’kar was once mortal, an Astartes some say. Perhaps it was some kind of fire and brimstone preacher in its previous incarnation.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “I don’t care for speeches,” said Honsou. “In my experience, warriors are either going to fight for you or they are not. Fancy words won’t change that.”

  “I think M’kar would disagree,” said the Newborn, its eyes fixed on the daemon prince as it held its blurred, machine-flesh arms out for silence.

  “We have stirred the Legion of Guilliman to action, and they will fight to protect that which they believe is theirs, but they will find us scattered to the corners of their realm, taking the cleansing fire of Chaos to every one of their worlds! Leave no heart beating, no stone upon another and render every field of turned earth to scorched wasteland. Only when Ultramar is a tomb, and all the sons of Guilliman are dead, will our task be complete.”

  The daemon raised its arms and darkness swept out from its monstrous form, filling the chamber with crackling shadows as they spread from its exhaling form. Every warrior enveloped by the darkness gasped, honoured by the touch of a daemonic lord of the warp.

  “The inferno of my vengeance fills you!” roared the daemon. “It will burn you, my bearers of the holy word, it will fill your veins with power and fire until Ultramar is in ashes. As my power flows in you, so too will I see what you see, feel what you feel and know what you know. With each death I will grow stronger. With every fortress burned my reach will stretch further. You will be my army of dark righteousness. You will be the Bloodborn and your name shall strike terror into the hearts of men!”

  The daemon’s eyes shone with the light of its infernal fury, a hatred born thousands of years ago when the galaxy was a place of wonder and possibility.

  “Spread throughout Ultramar and take my fire to the Ultramarines! Burn them from their fastnesses until no trace remains. This is my holy word!”

  SIX

  Tigurius closed his eyes, letting his breathing deepen and his concentration focus as he entered his trance. He sat within his private chambers within the Library of Ptolemy, that mountainous repository of knowledge that bore the name of the first and greatest Librarian of the Ultramarines. Little was known of Ptolemy, though some said he had been present at the trial of Magnus the Red. Whether he had stood as an accuser or one of the forgotten Librarians who had rallied to his defence was unknown.

  Magnus was a figure of fascination to Varro Tigurius. Where he could understand the fallen primarch’s thirst for knowledge, he could never imagine what had driven him to wield the foulest arts and think they would not taint him. Such power was corrupt and no one, not primarch or mortal, could touch it without blackening their soul. The Imperium’s distrust of the psyker was one of the crucial hypocrisies that kept it from total unity, yet the solution to that dichotomy was beyond Tigurius.

  How could any society preach intolerance of that which allowed it to function?

  What was the difference between sorcery and psychic power? Did it depend on the wielder, or did it depend on the outcome? Or was it the means employed to gain the power what mattered? It was all in the definitions, knew Tigurius.

  Votive candles burned in the corners of his chambers and incense tapers filled the air with mandragora essence. A fug of vapours hung beneath the Imperial eagle cut into the stonework of the ceiling, and the psychically-attuned hellfire crystals woven within the fabric of his armoured hood chimed in sympathy with his heartbeat.

  This ritual of divination he was attempting could be achieved without such props, but Tigurius found they aided his concentration, and in matters concerning the warp, concentration was key to survival.

  He put the matter aside for now, already thinking of a lesson for the Codicers and more advanced Lexicani. Tigurius took a deep, cleansing breath and let his body relax, drawing the power of the warp into the protected conduits within his flesh. Its touch was cold, like liquid mercury flowing through his veins, and he shivered at its touch.

  One by one the sensations of the world around him faded away, his perceptions of mundane reality overtaken by a rushing cascade of white noise. He let it come, allowing his consciousness to be borne along by the tides and ever-shifting currents of the fluid realm beyond the gates of the empyrean.

  Some men could free their souls from their flesh, but to fly the depths of the warp was to invite disaster or worse. Ultramarines Librarians understood that to risk their immortal souls with such reckless leaps into the unknown were foolhardy, though Tigurius couldn’t deny he had been tempted to venture beyond the confines of his flesh to feel the rushing currents of the warp flowing around his subtle body.

  Tigurius dismissed the petty blandishments of the warp, recognising the impulse for what it was. How easily men’s souls were tempted!

  He smiled and felt the first stirrings of the vast web of the future coalescing around him, its shivering cords visible as the finest golden lines. All existence was embodied within this web, an unimaginably complex and interwoven lattice that constantly sang with the impacts mortals made upon it. The vast majority of individuals were so insignificant to the grand parade of history that even the mightiest among them sent only the tiniest shiver along its fibres, but every now and again…

  The cords around Tigurius were singing and he felt the confluence of destinies in this moment. Lives of consequence were coming together, and such was the force of the vibrations running along the web that Tigurius knew that many would soon be stilled forever. Dozens of the golden lines around him were in motion and he followed the nearest, letting the subtle shifts of its temporal frequency guide him to a potential future.

  He followed it until the world splintered around him as the future took on too many aspects to see any with any degree of clarity. The future of Ultramar hung on a million different threads, each one pulled taut in myriad different directions.

  Tigurius saw a host of threads knotted together, each vibrating with desperate urgency as events impacted upon them. Worlds of Ultramar burned with daemonic fire upon some, while in others they bloomed as verdant as Prandium had once burst with life.

  A rocky world of forest-shawled mountains was engulfed in battle, a world Tigurius recognised as Espandor. He saw the great city of the river, the place named for Ancient Galatan’s fall. Its once proud triumphal ways and processionals were now thronged with the forces of the Archenemy as they closed in upon a wedge of blue-armoured warriors. Their flag was falling and amid the carnage, Tigurius saw a shining warrior
beset by all manner of foes. The red cloak identified him as Cato Sicarius.

  A half-breed witch woman with blue hair and colourful robes launched herself at him, but the threads sang and Tigurius was hurled from Espandor. His spiralling vision settled upon a forsaken world of the dead, its cities lifeless tombs and its people exterminated. He saw a citadel of ancient days restored to glory, its marble walls defended by a host of warriors in enormous suits of armour. The Chapter banner of the Ultramarines flew from its tallest tower, and the light of glory shone from this heroic flag, a light that was all that stood between inevitable decline and glorious resurgence.

  He saw familiar faces upon the citadel’s cracked ramparts, but before he could see more, the threads sang again and he was hurled onwards to a world of darkness, a world of caverns that had never known the sun. Yet within the warren of tunnels, humanity thrived in enormous caves so vast that they were as grand as any fertile valley of Quintarn. Four underground rivers fed the largest cavern, and though Tigurius knew the surface of this world was more lethal than any deathworld, its people were as contented and fortunate as any of Ultramar.

  Of all the worlds Tigurius had seen, he knew with utter conviction that this was the point upon which all things revolved. This world held the key to Ultramar’s salvation, but equally it was also the source of its doom.

  With that realisation, his perception of the web of possible futures fell away and Tigurius was seized with a lurching sense of vertigo. He closed his eyes and allowed the senses of his body to reacquaint themselves with the material world. He recited the books of the Codex Astartes and allowed the soothing rendition of his primarch’s greatest work to soothe his soul before opening his eyes.

  Though he hadn’t been aware of moving, he was holding his staff out before him and the fingers of his right hand were resting upon the symbols representing the four ethical cords.