Lords of Blood, page 118
‘We will find them,’ said Dolomen. Astorath stared out into the woods, ignoring Idrin. ‘Lord Astorath senses them.’
‘How?’ said Idrin.
‘Blood ties,’ said Dolomen, and would say no more.
The trees grew directly from the water on arched roots. They were a leafless variety, possessing pores for respiration on their spreading fingers, so though alive they appeared dead. Despite this and the sodden wood, and the sap-weeping gashes that split the bark of many, there was a symmetry between the roots and the spreading branches that gave them a certain beauty. As they went in further, the trees grew taller, the roots higher, until the boat was sailing directly under the trunks.
There was a great deal of life there. Chitinous crustaceans stalked along the roots. Shoals of eels exploded away from the approaching boat, disappearing into the inky water in a blizzard of metallic flakes. Birds cawed from the high branches. Day bats defecated on the boat from their roosts. Of the xenos there was no sign, save one sole example caught in the upper limbs of a tree, its inflation sac torn and tentacles limp, already rotting in the heat.
Night came. Luminous fungi lit up on every tree, so that cold fires consumed the forest. Astorath ordered them to continue. Idrin turned on the searchlight upon the bow. Several times they reached open leads of water between the trees, and then Cellew would tiredly ask which way the Redeemer wished to go. He remained silent a moment, intent on the night, looking ahead, until he indicated wordlessly which direction they should take. This was always towards the darkest place.
Day returned, grey and sickly. The swamps carried on in all directions, yet their character was changing, so there were scattered patches of solid ground upon which grew different trees. The islands became more numerous, raised higher out of the water, until the boat was sailing down a broad river fringed by the swamp trees, behind which jungles rose.
Astorath closed his eyes and moved no more from his spot. He held the Executioner’s Axe loosely in his left hand, the corner of the axe blade resting on the deck. Dolomen bade everyone be quiet, for Astorath was searching for signs of their quarry in his uncanny way. The boat slid through the water, its electric motor purring, the racket of Dulcis’ life loud in every quarter.
Not long before noon, Astorath opened his eyes and spoke a single word.
‘Here.’
Cellew pointed the prow into the shore. She cut the engine, and the boat coasted to a stop with a gentle bump.
Bedevoir and Dolomen prepared themselves. Idrin pre-empted Dolomen’s command when the Space Marine turned to face him and Cellew.
‘Wait?’ he said. Dolomen nodded. The Space Marines jumped into the water. Oil black, it came only to their chests, yet it was with difficulty that they waded through the tangle of roots towards what counted for solid ground.
Astorath reached the muddy shore first, pushing his way through wet branches and vanishing into the trees. He still limped, but he pushed on ahead. Dolomen and Bedevoir struggled more, their armoured weight pushing them into the sucking mud. They emerged covered in a fresh layer of filth.
‘Where did he go?’ said Bedevoir.
‘That way. Footprints.’
‘Is he always this way?’
‘Yes,’ said Dolomen. ‘His duty drives him on. He rarely waits, though truthfully he rarely needs to.’
The ground rose. Water collected in hollows among the trees, and the two Space Marines found that the soil between them was firmer. They trampled the brush underfoot as they went deeper into the jungle. The trees there were different, thicker of trunk, and rooted directly into the ground, while their branches bore heavy cargoes of sharp needles. Small animals ran squealing into the undergrowth without showing themselves. An oppressive feeling affected both of them. Dolomen stopped Bedevoir with a hand on the elbow.
‘Can you feel it?’
‘The sense of weight on me, and…’ Bedevoir searched for a word long unused, ‘dread?’
‘It is the Rage that calls to us. When one falls, others may fall. It is a contagion. Their blood calls to our blood.’
‘This is still strange to me. I did not know I would feel it so deeply in myself.’
‘You must prepare yourself.’
‘How?’ said Bedevoir.
‘How can you not know?’ said Dolomen.
‘We have not been told,’ said Bedevoir. ‘Our Reclusiam has but one member remaining. We Mars-born were not a priority for him.’
‘All is in disarray,’ said Dolomen sadly. ‘Then heed me, and learn now. Focus upon the present. You have experienced the Thirst?’
‘Yes,’ said Bedevoir.
‘When it comes, do not draw on it. The red road leads to the black. The Thirst gives us strength, but it brings out the beast in us. Remember that you are an angel of the Emperor of Mankind. Remember who you are, and where you are. Do you follow the five graces and the five virtues?’
‘Our Chapter has different traditions,’ said Bedevoir.
‘Then remember them. Recite them to yourself. They will ground you in the now. You are a Red Wing. You are not a Blood Angel of the Ninth Legion.’
‘I understand.’
‘Let the spirit of Sanguinius guide you, do not let it overwhelm you.’
‘You are being serious,’ said Bedevoir.
‘Then you know we are in trouble,’ said Dolomen.
They went further slowly, until the ringing of weapons caught their attention.
‘Astorath,’ said Dolomen.
They broke into a run.
Bedevoir and Dolomen came into a clearing in the trees to find a Red Wings Space Marine in mud-caked armour already bleeding his last into the dirt. Astorath had another kneeling on the ground, his neck exposed. The Executioner’s Axe was ready to strike.
‘Brother Bors! Brother Ulfius!’ said Bedevoir.
‘See to the other,’ said Astorath. ‘I have this one. He remembers who he is. I shall deliver him.’
‘Cover us – there are yet three at large,’ said Dolomen to Bedevoir. He put down his boltgun on the ground. With his combat knife drawn, he approached the dying warrior. Ulfius, his name scroll read. His guts hung out of his broken war-plate, and yet still the Space Marine would have posed a danger to Dolomen had both his legs not been broken and his chest cut deeply.
The warrior raised his hand feebly.
‘Father,’ he said. ‘Father, do not forsake me.’
Dolomen knelt by his side and gripped his hand in his own.
‘Quiet now, you have served your lord well. You have saved us. Be at peace.’
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Bedevoir.
‘Silence,’ said Dolomen with a glance behind. ‘Let him die well.’
‘He killed me,’ said the dying warrior. His eyes were completely red. His eye teeth were fully extended, raking his lower lip open.
‘He did, but not in vain,’ said Dolomen. ‘Know that you are worthy, for you have seen through the eyes of most blessed Sanguinius. For all that there are no true gods, of all men, our father came the closest to the divine.’
‘Help me,’ said the warrior.
‘Dolomen!’ hissed Bedevoir.
From the other side of the clearing came Astorath’s voice, urging calm and control upon the other Red Wings warrior.
‘Be at peace,’ said Dolomen. He angled the knife so it was parallel with the warrior’s face and pushed. The blade cut down into the warrior’s neck, severing arteries and penetrating the primary heart. Dolomen withdrew the blade, and executed the warrior with a similar cut to the other side that killed his secondary heart.
‘Be at peace,’ said Astorath. The Executioner’s Axe took Brother Bors’ head off with an upward cut to the front that avoided the backpack.
The warrior toppled forward. His neck pumped vitae weakly onto the ground. The soil was too saturated to take it, and the blood nosed off over the damp earth, collecting dead needles on its front.
At the sight of that, Bedevoir felt the red calling to him, war drums beating to the rhythm of a human heart, and something worse behind them, banners of black, and the ending of sanity.
He swallowed unwanted saliva. Astorath and Dolomen knelt and bowed their heads in silent prayer. Bedevoir felt an unaccustomed dizziness. Black licked at the edges of his vision.
‘I am Bedevoir, brother of the Red Wings,’ he whispered to himself. ‘This is Dulcis, this is now.’
Astorath and Dolomen stood simultaneously.
‘That was dangerous,’ said Bedevoir. His reaction to the bloodletting left him feeling jittery.
‘We are bringers of mercy,’ said Astorath. He lifted his axe. ‘They call it the Executioner’s Axe, but I am no executioner. These brothers suffered. We gave them peace.’
Dolomen’s knife rasped back into its scabbard. He retrieved his boltgun.
‘Stay aware,’ he said. ‘The others are near.’
Jungle pressed hard on them. Twigs scraped across battleplate. Fungal smears and green streaks of algae joined the muck caking the Space Marines. The atmosphere grew more and more oppressive, the sky more distant, and the heat under the trees climbed. They pushed on to dark places where few had ever been. Civilisation, the Imperium, even the notion of them, seemed far away there. All of them heard the clamour of ancient battles on the edge of their hearing. All three of them felt the tug of the Rage. For Bedevoir the experience was deeply unsettling. Dolomen muttered his own prayers, accustomed to walking the edge of insanity. Only Astorath greeted the black and the red, accepted them, taking them to him as one would friends gone from the path of righteousness.
They climbed upwards, following paths trodden into the earth by generations of animals. There were the occasional imprints of heavy ceramite boots, but they did not need these to find the lost. The Rage drew them on.
They mounted the summit of a low, miserable ridge where soft mudstones barely harder than the earth made weeping outcrops. It was there that Lieutenant Jadriel and his last two comrades launched their attack.
All three of them felt the first of the lost coming before they heard his wordless war cry. A bow wave of torment washed over them all, threatening to drag them down into the same dark place the warrior inhabited, then his shout came amplified by malfunctioning equipment, raw and dark with despair.
‘Brother Peilin!’ Bedevoir called.
Peilin was too far into the night of the soul to hear Bedevoir and no longer knew who he was. In his blood madness he had discarded his weapons, and so now he leapt from the top of the crumbling rock and fell upon them like a boulder. Dolomen was fast, loosing a shot from his boltgun as the warrior hurtled at him, but it missed, and Peilin’s armoured body crashed against him, the pair falling into the mud, where they wrestled.
Bedevoir’s head reeled with the call to battle. Flashes of ancient warriors whose names he inexplicably knew came to him, their armour unfamiliar, their colours not his own, and yet these were more than his brothers.
They were his sons.
‘I am Bedevoir, sergeant of the Red Wings,’ he said to himself. ‘I am Bedevoir. This is Dulcis.’
He came back to himself to find events had moved on. Astorath fought with a second warrior, who had approached while Bedevoir was lost in his fugue. Dolomen rolled around in the mud, sliding down the shallow slope. Peilin smashed at him, cracking the older Space Marine’s ceramite with his armoured fists. Dolomen punched back, the armour clashing, but Peilin slapped his blows aside and gripped Dolomen about the neck. Dolomen struggled to throw off the stranglehold. The sinew coil enhancement Cawl had added to the Space Marines’ suite of gifts amplified Peilin’s abilities beyond what Dolomen could deal with. The Primaris gripped Dolomen harder, forcing his helm back, pushing in the banded seal of his neck while Dolomen slapped helplessly at his hands.
Astorath fared better. Even lame he was formidable, and nimble out of his armour. Bare toes dug into the hillside where his opponent slipped. He waited for the right moment to deliver blows from his axe, each hit damaging the lost brother’s wargear, and bleeding him by degrees.
Bedevoir moved to help, but stopped, lost again. Bemused, he saw the inside of a starship and tasted atmospheric mix spoiled with rotten meat and the hard metallic bite of warp power. He strode ahead, knowing he was going to die, but going anyway.
‘Bedevoir,’ choked Dolomen. ‘Bedevoir!’
Metal walls flickered back to sodden trees. He saw the wood again. He shook off the vision and raised his gun. Dolomen and Peilin rolled around on the ground. Mud filled every crack of their armour. Rain was falling again, beginning as a few fat drops that turned into a downpour.
‘Bedevoir!’
Bedevoir sighted the bolt pistol, waiting for a clear shot. The jungle flickered away. Voidship corridors, enemies dying to blasts from his spear, his great sword in the other hand. A difficult march with death at the end.
‘Bedevoir…’ Dolomen’s voice was a croak, but it penetrated the shouts and imprecations of the twisted Sons of Horus. Bedevoir blinked. Rain. Forest. Lightning.
A spear of light slammed down into a tree, blasted it in two. The glare of its discharge shocked back the dark. Bedevoir fired.
The bolt penetrated Peilin’s reactor pack with a soft plunk. Fire flashed within. Peilin lost his armour’s support and Dolomen struck back immediately.
His own battleplate grinding with the effort, he forced apart the Primaris’ hands, slammed his knee up until he braced it against Peilin’s chest, then flipped him over. Peilin’s backpack caught on the ground, stopping him from being thrown onto his back, but Dolomen scrambled up, shifted his grip and with a grunt dislocated Peilin’s left wrist. He fell forward, catching the warrior on the side of the head with his shin, pinning him in place and stunning him long enough to draw his blade.
‘For the love of Sanguinius, I bring you mercy,’ he said, and rammed the blade sideways through Peilin’s throat and out of his neck, cutting his spine. Dolomen fell back wheezing. Astorath continued his deadly dance up the side of the knoll, drawing away from Dolomen and Bedevoir.
Bedevoir moaned. He leaned forward, bracing himself on his knees.
‘Bedevoir,’ Dolomen said. ‘Bedevoir, you are feeling the Rage. Fight it, my friend. Stay with me.’ He attempted to rise, but slumped back. He grasped at his leg. Blood leaked from his waist joint.
Bedevoir half-slid, half-stumbled down the slope. He stopped by Dolomen.
‘Rest, my son,’ he said. ‘You have fought well. I will continue without you.’ He looked away and waved his arm, summoning Apothecaries dead for millennia.
‘Bedevoir!’ Dolomen called. ‘Stop! Remember who you are! Fight it!’
Bedevoir climbed up the hill towards the ridge.
‘Destiny waits for no one,’ Bedevoir said. ‘I must go on.’ Lightning flashed around them.
Cursing, Dolomen hobbled after.
Astorath fought the lost Space Marine up the hill, cutting at him carefully, each blow of his axe carving away pieces of his armour. It would take time to drain his strength, but the Redeemer was cautious. He was without armour and the Primaris were stronger. Their Mars-born might, amplified by the Rage, posed a danger to him.
The storm raged. The ridgetop was bare of trees, so prominent above the landscape it attracted more than its share of lightning. Anything that grew there would be hit, and die. He looked up at it. The cliff was only forty feet high. They were halfway up, winding round the slope at its side. Another factor to be careful of.
A flash of lightning on the Red Wings warrior’s nameplate revealed his identity as Dindran, though Astorath had guessed it already from the list Lamorak had provided. So many names had been entrusted to him. So many lives that needed ending. These warriors of the Red Wings were all beyond help, too deep into the memories of Sanguinius’ death to serve in one final battle as members of the Death Company. They must instead be killed. That was Astorath’s role and his burden, the Bringer of Mercy, the ending of pain.
Dindran had lost his helm and his face was contorted with rage, the awful changes the curse wrought upon those of the Blood already twisting his features into something inhuman. While his soul underwent the most sacred end one of the Blood could hope for, his body took on the aspect of a beast.
Dindran was wordless, as the lost often were, but Astorath spoke softly to him.
‘Duty is our burden, but it is our nature to serve, and should be accepted gladly,’ he said. ‘Sanguinius wrote that of all things, duty is the most sweet. Yours is at an end. Rejoice, for you are with our father.’
His words did nothing to soothe the warrior’s savage temper, but were not said to calm; they were said to prepare his soul for the end.
Astorath readied his axe for the final blow, seeing that the time approached, when a voice called out through the rumble of thunder and the crack of lightning striking trees.
‘I see you, brother! I see you! Come to my sword and give answer for your treachery.’
The sky sheeted white. Jadriel stood upon the edge of the low cliff, silhouetted against the storm’s fury.
Dindran lunged for Astorath in his moment of distraction. Astorath side-stepped, brought his axe around in a horizontal sweep and shattered Dindran’s backpack. The blade continued into his spine, breaking it. Dindran fell face down into the mud.
‘I bring you mercy,’ said Astorath. ‘Be at peace, son of the Blood.’
‘No!’ Jadriel’s cry was full of pain. ‘You have slain your last Blood Angel, Horus! Face someone who might best you, or name yourself coward and fall upon the Emperor’s mercy.’
‘I am not your enemy, Brother Jadriel,’ said Astorath softly. ‘Look into your heart and remember who you are. I shall return you to your brothers so you may serve one final time.’
