Lords of Blood, page 75
The stress of navigation pained Guondrin. Visions of such awfulness. Bloody sweat seeped from his pores, gluing his robes to his skin. His mortal eyes ran. He was shouting into the room without realising, thrashing against his input cables. All the Navigators were bound to their thrones. They had to be.
Colours swirled and swam. His warp eye bled freely. There was calm in the warp, and beauty too, if one knew where to look. Like the angel fighting its own shadow in the night. This was the guide of the Blood Angels. There was purity in it.
He saw beauty in the power of the ships and the way they forged on through the tempest. He saw glory in the endless possibilities the warp possessed. There was a gift of power somewhere in the madness.
The storms would pass, and life would return to normal. Guondrin refused to believe the dire pronouncements that they lived at the end of times. The Imperium had persisted for ten thousand years, the Navigators far longer. They would survive, and prosper again.
He held onto these thoughts, and to the sense of wonder the deeps provided.
If only he weren’t so tired.
He tried to work up enough spit to swallow. His mouth and throat were dry as desert sands.
If only he could have a cup of wine.
The angel and the shadow turned around in the sky, now the size of men, now the size of gods. Black sword met golden. They pushed against each other, neither strong enough to best his opposite. Between the angles of their straining blades, Guondrin stared into a shimmering that rippled beauteously, and calmed, and he saw a vision of himself years ago, a patch of the past that manifested thousands of miles from the Dominance, yet near enough to touch and taste. He saw himself as he was during the time of his first real assignment, in a courtyard where gentle fountains played, and greenery swayed in the ventilation breeze of the ship, and laughing women served him fine wines from a hundred worlds.
The scene changed. It took on a tainted air. Clean light shone a sordid pink. His past self looked back at him, and beckoned. The doppelgänger blinked, and his eyes, all of three of them, were black as oil.
In his throne, Guondrin’s bloody sweat ran cold. He dismissed the images.
‘We have drawn the attention of entities in the warp,’ he gurgled. ‘Increase Geller field output. Accelerate. Throw them off. Hurry!’
‘My lord, the enginarium reports problems with the field. We are travelling at maximum speed,’ said Hethen.
‘Tell them to try!’ Guondrin shouted.
Hethen relayed the command. A few moments later, the frequency of the ship’s vibration shifted, the subtle sign the reactor was pouring more power into the Geller field and drive. This was mortal power, and therefore only supplemental to the dark technologies that pushed the ship through the warp, but it might help. The ship moved more quickly, catching up to the Bloodcaller and the rest of the flotilla.
It was too late.
Rameese in throne five began to howl. His cries carried mind to mind. His fists beat against the metal of his throne. Something wicked approached them head on, obscuring the shadow and the angel, then the rest of the fleet. Guondrin tried to look away, but it would not relinquish his vision, and poured vast and shining into his sight wherever he looked. With increasing horror he knew it saw him too. Within its terrible form was all the pleasure of the world. He denied it, he shouted prayers. It had seen him, looked into him, violated his memories, but he would not succumb.
His mouth was so dry. His body hurt.
Life was better then, the shadow said to him. It can be so again.
If only I had a cup of wine, he thought.
A single, simple longing was enough to damn him.
An intelligence slipped down the light reaching his warp eye. A sense of pressure mounted in his nose and throat. Something probed at him, using him as a way through the field.
‘We are sighted! We must leave the warp!’ Guondrin said. The words were strangled in his throat, and the sense of dread built, crushing down on his will. His hands twitched so sharply his knuckles cracked.
‘Prepare for immediate emergency translation!’ He told the ship’s machine-spirit, not the captain. The ship would sing it wide. All the crew must know. They would come out hard and tumbling from the warp. The ship was ready. It understood. Dominance’s iron soul shouted the news across all decks in a rapid stream of binharic. A hundred thousand voxmitters translated it into Naval Gothic.
The pressure in Guondrin’s throat grew. He struggled to breathe. Every breath he took brought a choking musk into his lungs. Blackness tinged his warp sight.
As calmly as he could, he sent commands to the enginarium and Geller generatorium. The tone of the ship’s sound changed as the warp engines prepared to fire. The teeth-prickling feel of pre-translation crawled all over the ship.
‘Now! Now! Get us out of the warp now!’ His voice was barely a whisper. His tongue was fat in his mouth and tasted abominably sweet.
Darkness grew in his vision, swamping his mind, filling him with madness. The thing was ahead, unknowable in its monstrosity, trying to get in. Guondrin’s soul shrivelled as his mind tried to give it form, finding only horror.
‘Warp breach imminent,’ he whispered. ‘Prepare to offer mercy to Navigator thrones five and one.’
A torrent of colour poured over the prow of Dominance. Black lightning flickered around the ship. Geller generators screamed. Warp engines spooled up to slice a path from the insanity of the warp to the stillness of the void. A ragged gash cut down through the madness, revealing the cold, logical blackness of real space. Tendrils of half-formed matter reached for the stars beyond. The thing was in their way, blocking their exit. It had its claws in him. It looked out through his eyes. It hungered at what it saw. The hexagrams in the oculus glared bright enough to blind.
Guondrin moaned.
A cup of wine in gentler days. He could taste it now. He could hear the laughter of his servants.
With a convulsive heave, the ship burst from real space. Power spiked all over the vessel, burning out systems. Guondrin felt his humanity slipping away. His flesh crawled and bulged. Rameese screamed in agony.
‘No, no, no,’ Guondrin moaned.
Through the eyes opening all over his face, Guondrin saw the thing in the warp slither free, pass into reality and plunge into the ship.
Alarms blared everywhere. The ship wallowed powerless in the void. The rift was slow in closing. Vast arms of energy reached for the Dominance to drag it back in.
The thing was in the ship. It was in Guondrin. His fellow Navigators thrashed in their restraints and screamed as it touched their souls.
‘Execute mercy!’ he said. Scented slobber ran over his chin. Needle teeth burst from his gums. ‘Execute mercy! Kill me!’
The spiked bolt slammed out of the throne, shattering his spine and punching up into his brain. His service was done.
And yet he was not dead.
The golden angel battled a monstrous being who wore an angelic shape, but who was comprised entirely of darkness. The pair of them swelled to immense proportions. The fleet sank within them, became part of them.
A sense of terrible dread filled Mephiston, drawing his attention behind him, back the way they had come. He saw the Dominance plunge out of the warp into a field of stars, pursued by a swarm of shadows. A ripple across the seething energies around him drew his attention to another ship, and he saw its Geller field collapse. The warp bubble went out, came to a dragging stop, and was set upon by horrors beyond counting.
The golden angel and the black angel did not see. They continued their fight. The black parried the blade of the gold, flinging back its foe. Then the black angel turned and stared into Mephiston’s soul.
Its being sucked at him, drawing the Lord of Death towards it. Mephiston felt it swell up, threatening to pull him in and consume him, so he threw himself out of the warp, back into the relative safety of the Bloodcaller. Such pain there was from so abrupt a shift, gone in an instant as his soul sped back into his body.
Settling back into reality made his soul crawl, as if being free in the warp was his natural condition, and flesh a terrible prison. Mephiston drew a great racking breath into his lungs. With disgust he felt them quiver. Such carnal impermanence was no vehicle for his immortal soul.
The feelings passed. He lived again as a man, though he could not forget his numinous state out there in the wild seas of possibility. The peril of the black angel did not seem so great, and he half desired to face it.
His eyes opened onto a room full of blood scent and the droning of counter-sorcery.
‘My Lord Mephiston?’ Rhacelus came forward, his horned staff levelled at the kneeling Mephiston’s head. ‘Why do you return? Is it you?’
‘It is I, my brother,’ said Mephiston, his voice hoarse. Wearily, he got to his feet. ‘No beast but I resides within this body. Stand down. I have ill tidings.’
Rhacelus scrutinised him. His glowing blue eyes were proof against any falsehood.
‘I see it is you.’ Rhacelus settled his staff’s butt upon the floor. ‘Cease the ritual!’ he commanded.
There was no finale to the chant. It trailed off, reluctantly dying. Each Librarian practised his art according to his own gifts and preference, and so awoke from their trances in their own time. The Librarians returned themselves to their mortal bodies. Ties of brotherhood did not go beyond the realm of matter. Every one of them was forever alone in the face of the powers behind reality.
Tired eyes opened in drawn faces. Only Mephiston seemed unaffected, appearing instead invigorated, a fact that Rhacelus noted with concern. A lesser psyker might have attempted to probe Mephiston’s mind, but Rhacelus knew better than to try that.
‘What is happening, my lord? We are not yet at Baal,’ Rhacelus said.
‘The Sanguinor is assailed by a black angel in the empyrean,’ said Mephiston. ‘Daemons flock to us. The Dominance has fallen out of the warp, and several other ships are under attack. Bring the rest of the fleet into real space now. Inform Commander Dante’s servants that he should be awoken immediately. We are at war again.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DOMINANCE
Dante coughed, spraying his four servants with blood. They did not flinch but continued their ministrations, first wiping his eyes with soft cloths so he might see, then gently grasping him to raise him from his sarcophagus. Their hands slipped on his blood-slick skin. He tried to shake them off but he could not rise alone. He trembled, for though the room was warm he felt intolerably cold. His muscles disobeyed him. He shamed himself with his weakness.
He grasped the sides of the sarcophagus. His fingers were numb and would not grip. His left hand slipped free, slapping against his muscled chest and bringing forth a spike of pain from his wounds.
‘Steady, my lord!’ said one of his blood thralls. They struggled to lift him. Dante was old beyond imagining, but the Emperor’s gifts spared him the infirmities of age. He was still tall, an ogre of a man, heavy with muscle and bones dense as rock.
‘Enough,’ he croaked. He raised his arms one after the other, forcing his servants to release him. He gripped the sarcophagus sides again and pulled himself upright until he stood on unsteady legs. He wavered, but he did not fall. He hawked blood from his lungs and spat it into the sarcophagus’ gurgling drains. The iron taste of it stirred the thirst, and his weakness became a lesser concern.
‘I will stand on my own. Get back from me.’
The blood stink was hot in his nostrils. His servants’ arteries pulsed invitingly. His fangs twitched in his gums.
‘You must get back.’
‘My lord,’ one said. They bowed and took several steps away.
The sarcophagus lid was held clear on carved levers, but there was a lip as high as Dante’s knee at the bottom of the coffin, and he struggled to raise his foot over it. His limbs were rubbery, his skin without feeling, except where his wounds throbbed. Dante was used to hiding discomfort, and managed to step out with dignity. Rivulets of vitae ran off his body and splattered on the floor. His servants took another step backwards. Their fear was rising. He could smell it on them.
‘Calm yourselves,’ he said. He tugged out the lines plugged into his neural ports. ‘I am awake.’ He swallowed the vitae lingering in his mouth. He yearned for fresher fare, pumped hot by dying hearts. He held out his hand. One of the servants hurried to collect his robes and give them to him. They bowed with every completed action. Dante took a step forward, and was surprised when his foot failed to support his weight and his leg folded under him.
His men rushed to catch him, grunting with the effort at halting his fall. They were all strong, yet they laboured as if they attempted to hold up a collapsing temple.
‘Enough, enough!’ Dante said. He shifted his weight, recovered his balance and stood slowly.
‘My lord, I am sorry,’ said their leader. ‘We had to interrupt your healing sleep. Lord Mephiston…’ The man paled as he uttered the name, and his words faltered. ‘Lord Mephiston sent word that we have been forced to come out of the warp.’
Dante stared at the man until he looked away. Though the thrall was in the prime of his life, and all the harm done him by his early life banished by Imperial technomancy, already Dante could see him aged and feeble. His name was Colma, and he was Dante’s equerry. Every one of the sixty-seven equerries before Colma had withered and died before Dante’s eyes.
Perhaps Colma would be the last.
‘Then we are not at Baal,’ said Dante.
‘Not yet, my lord. The Lord Librarian Rhacelus spoke of a deadly shadow. We are deep in interstellar space, some light years from our home. I am sorry, I did not fully comprehend.’
‘You are young,’ Dante said, and that was true, at least for a while. ‘You will learn.’
‘Captain Antargo is coming to escort you. Battle comes.’
‘Then prepare me. I would be ready by the time he arrives.’
Orfeo, another of his servants, hurried to a cupboard hidden within the wall’s carvings, and from inside fetched out a ewer of wine, a goblet and a smaller vial. The vial was elegantly blown from smoked glass, with a bloodstone stopper. The servant set all upon a table, filled the goblet from the ewer, then drew out the stopper from the vial. A dripper was attached, and with it he put nine drops of dark liquid into the wine, stirred it, and gave it to Dante with a bow.
Suddenly wracked with thirst, Dante took the vessel and downed the wine. The first flavour to hit was the sweetness of the grapes of the Verdis Elysia. The wine was of an old vintage, and of dwindling stocks. Nothing had grown in the Chapter’s fields since the devastation of the Arx Angelicum. The second taste was subtle, but more arousing; the salt iron of blood. It excited Dante’s omophagea, bringing a little flash of stolen memory, and a yearning for more. One thirst was slaked by the drink, the other hardly blunted.
Invigorated by the fortified wine, Dante’s strength returned, and he became steady. ‘More,’ he said. Orfeo hurried to obey.
Now Dante was up, his servants set about their allotted tasks, fetching towels and scented water to wipe the blood from Dante’s face and hands. One noted his demeanour in the commander’s Book of Hours, giving thanks while he wrote that Dante had awoken sane and hale.
Colma cleared his throat. He had a scroll and an autoquill ready. ‘My lord? Did you see anything while you slept?’
Dante accepted a second cup of wine and sipped it. ‘I dreamt of disaster,’ he said.
Colma dutifully noted this down. ‘Of what manner, my lord Dante?’
‘Nothing worthy for the record. A disaster of long ago, not one to come. I do not have much of Sanguinius’ foresight.’
‘It could still be a portent,’ said Colma. He looked up from the scroll. He had very fine handwriting. Blood thralls were expected to master all things appertaining to their service. They were no different to their lords in their desire for perfection.
Dante shook his head. Blood was drying into the wrinkles of his face, caking his long white hair. He caught sight of himself in the polished walls of stone. A half-reflection, but the bloody wrinkles made his age apparent. He averted his gaze.
‘It is not a portent. It was a memory. An unwelcome one.’
Dante placed his goblet upon a tray carried by one of the four.
‘I am unclean. I do not have time to purify myself. Prepare my lavatesarium for my return so I may cleanse then. Open my armoury.’
‘I shall see that it is done,’ said Colma, bowing crisply. He moved quickly. His mind was quick to find ways to serve Dante’s every need. These traits would not last. In no time at all, Colma would become as slow as poor Arafeo had been, and then what? The next, and the next, and then another, on and on; a parade of brief youth, infirmity and death hobbling on for Dante to survey, forever.
Colma opened the portals to the armourium with minimal ceremony. Dante’s quarters aboard Bloodcaller were an exact match for those on the Blade of Vengeance – large, sumptuous and for his use alone, though many of the weapons cases lining the armourium hall were empty. There had not been time, when the Dominance’s distress call had come, to transfer his relics aboard before the Blood Angels set out on their rescue mission.
His thralls began to sponge the drying blood from his naked body.
‘Stop,’ he said. ‘I shall fight blood-clad. I find myself waging war against time above all other foes. I shall give it no advantage. Garb me.’
The thralls fitted his bodysuit to his filthy body, and began the process of armouring him with the aid of specialised servitors. Many of the prayers of armament they abbreviated or left out. As they worked, anthems began piping through the ship, calling the vessel’s complement of Blood Angels to arms.
