Redeemer - Guy Haley

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  Redeemer – Guy Haley

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Dante’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Redeemer

  By Guy Haley

  There were chords of pain that played for Astorath alone to hear. Music that troubled the dreams of insane composers haunted his waking hours. If it played anywhere, anywhere at all, then he would hear it. Most often he heard a lonely tune wrung from one miserable instrument, but at times these soloists would be joined by others to make quartets or sections, and in the worst of days an entire, melancholic orchestra would gather. Then the music would sing most urgently to him across time and space. Always it was discordant, tragic, full of pain and anger, notes played out of sequence as less-talented hands fumbled their way over a maestro’s work. The music recalled something great nonetheless, and was all the more painful for imperfection.

  These outpourings were for others to tame. The duty of his brother Chaplains was to get the strains to play in tune, to conduct the suffering towards a last crescendo. When the brothers in black and bone took the lead, the music would climax and cease, and in the ceasing Astorath the Grim would know that all had returned to rightness.

  Sometimes the music did not stop. Sometimes it rose to unbearable heights, past all hope of redemption, down to the blackest pits of despair, where it continued, polluting all around it with pain.

  It was Astorath’s role, as Blood Angels High Chaplain, to end these painful discords. His solemn duty was fratricide. His axe tasted noble Space Marine blood as often as it did the vitae of the Imperium’s enemies. ‘The Ender of Songs’, the aeldari called him, and apt though that was, he had a better-known title.

  To the Chapters of the Blood, he was the Redeemer of the Lost, and he was loved and loathed in equal measure for his excellence at his duty.

  Astorath slept his way across the light years. Wherever he went, his sarcophagus travelled with him, seated in the place of honour at the heart of the Eminence Sanguis.

  Only a few of the most high Blood Angels had their own personal sarcophagus. Astorath was naturally among them. The exterior of his sarcophagus was decorated with stylised sculpture that depicted the warrior inside. Although distorted by being wrapped around the lid, it was unmistakably Astorath rendered in the abyssal black of polished carbon.

  The sarcophagus was set at an angle of forty-five degrees at the centre of a ring of carvings depicting the High Chaplain’s responsibilities. In Astorath’s chamber all was chill. Frost coated the carvings. Red lumens bathed the room in a bloody glow, and black shadows hid from it. The colours echoed Astorath’s inner world. While Astorath slept, his dreams were of black and they were of red, and nothing else, until somewhere a warrior’s soul broke, and the music began again.

  Each song was different. He heard this one as a screeching passage that rose and stopped, and began again, over and over, a piece badly practised whose end could not be attained. It penetrated the bloody red; it sent ripples over the oily black. The music called to him for it could call to no one else. The song was a plea for mercy only he could grant. It woke him.

  Stirred from his slumber, Astorath opened his eyes in the blood-threaded amnion nourishing his body. The sarcophagus’ machine-spirit detected the movement, and began the process of full awakening. Drains opened at the base of the sarcophagus to suck the amnion away. The mask covering Astorath’s mouth came free, the amnion level dropped past his chin, and he took his first free breath since he had lain down to rest. The needle interfaces of monitoring machines slid from the sockets of his black carapace. Thick tubes twisted like umbilical cords suckled greedily at the arteries in his forearms, thighs and neck as he slept. They throbbed now as they returned his purified blood to him, and detached from his skin with sorrowful kisses.

  Light falling on the black sculpture changed, fading from sanguine to gentle red gold, the colour of the sunlight of Balor. Inset wheels spun within the sarcophagus’ ornate decoration, locks disengaged, a heavy bar disguised as the figure’s crossed arms lifted and rose. The lid slid up and away.

  Astorath sat up. Pale skin and jet-black hair glistened with residual preservative fluid.

  ‘Sergeant Dolomen,’ he said. His voice was quiet yet filled with authority. Vox-thieves hidden in the room’s decoration opened up communication with the command deck.

  ‘My lord,’ Dolomen responded.

  ‘A brother is lost. Prepare our Navigator for fresh directions. We have work to do.’

  The Eminence Sanguis appeared on no roll of service for the Blood Angels. It was not expected to take part in the Chapter’s battles and rarely did. It had been requested, built and commissioned solely as the personal transport of the High Chaplain, and had conveyed many holders of the office across the galaxy.

  Sepulchral halls linked sombre chambers. Every being upon that craft, whether unmodified human, tech-priest or Angel of Death, understood the solemnity of their mission and carried themselves with utmost dignity. The Eminence Sanguis was a near-silent ship, where robed figures went on solitary errands. Its machine-spirit was as cold as the void outside its plasteel skin and as distant as the stars it sailed for.

  It was a fast ship, quick in the void but swiftest in the warp. Although it was of low mass, in the realm of the warp concepts had more importance than physical truths, and the ship was heavy with duty. So singular was its purpose it cut easily through the conflicting currents of ideas that made the immaterium treacherous. Not even the madness of Chaos could deny the weight of Astorath’s work. Aided by the importance of its mission and the faith of those aboard, it passed through the worst of storms, and made impressive speed whatever etheric tempests curdled the Sea of Souls.

  In the nightmare of the warp, the Eminence Sanguis turned aside from its prior destination towards the source of the song.

  Astorath’s armour terrified the mortals who came to greet him. There were only three of them stood at the edge of the landing platform when he emerged into the dank forest, and they were frightened, for death stood behind him. His battleplate’s ceramite was carved to resemble musculature exposed by flaying, and was painted to match. His jump pack was an arcane design, its form dictated more by art than function, and to the cowering men and single woman, he appeared to be blessed with wings. The pinions were immobile, sculptures of metal as crow black as his hair, yet to them they seemed real. His pauldron was a field of skulls. His kneepads featured more of the same. The axe he carried was as tall and heavy as the largest of the mortals, with a haft fashioned to resemble a spine. All he carried and all he wore spoke of the ending of life.

  The world of Asque only accentuated his deathly aspect. The Blood Angels Stormraven squatted on a rusted landing platform half overtaken by forest growth. Support pillars were engulfed by rippled grey wood. Slimy creepers strangled guard rails, and buried machinery in wet mats of giving flesh. The ship was black, covered in red saltires and glowering skulls. Upon the ancient pad it resembled the ornamentation on an overgrown tomb, peeking out through a cemetery’s ruin.

  Mould crawled up every surface of the arching roots holding the fungus-trees off the ground. Clouds of their spores floated past in granular mists. The three mortals wore heavy respirators to protect themselves against the spores, but Astorath had no need of such protection, and stood before them bareheaded, a winged giant clad in skinned muscle. In the gloom of the fungal forest, his pale skin appeared blue. He was flanked by Sergeant Dolomen and the Sanguinary Priest Artemos, his only companions from the Chapter. Together they represented the triumvirate of bone,
blood and death that shaped the Blood Angels’ soul. They were doom incarnate.

  Astorath did not look human, and he was not. The mortals were right to be afraid.

  ‘Where are our brothers?’ Astorath asked them through bloodless lips.

  Despite their protection, the mortals’ eyes were rimmed red with spore exposure. The leader, the female, spoke with a voice roughened by poor quality air. She was old, but had that wiry strength certain women keep until the end of their lives.

  ‘They are this way, my lord,’ she said, pointing a wavering arm behind her to tangles of roots and trunks receding into the spore-blue air.

  Astorath looked into the forest. Far off, the music played.

  ‘Take me there,’ he said. ‘Dolomen, guard the ship.’

  The men and woman looked at each other nervously. None of them wished to be the one to start the march. The idea of telling Astorath what to do, even when asked to provide guidance, seemed to fill them with terror.

  ‘Take me now,’ Astorath said.

  Relieved to be commanded, the civilians led the way down a run of rockcrete stairs that was so buried in rotted matter, fungal stands and roots it appeared no more than an animal track.

  ‘You, female. Tell me what happened here.’ Astorath’s footsteps were heavy, thumping on the soft ground like dying heartbeats.

  ‘Your brother took the ordes meat–’ began the woman.

  ‘From the beginning. Tell me of this place. Tell me what happened to you before my brothers came. It will help me understand what has befallen them.’

  So she did. Her name, she said, was Srana. Astorath filed it away with a million other names, never to be forgotten.

  ‘This world is not a bad world,’ Srana began. ‘I have read of others. I know there are worse places than Asque.’

  They were obliged to duck through interlaced rubbery vines whose rough surfaces adhered to them. Astorath and Artemos shoved their way through with difficulty, for the vines would not break, and the paths the humans took were too small for them. As Astorath forced his way out, the woman glanced back, to see if she had spoken out of place. Astorath’s return stare had her turning her face away twice as quickly.

  ‘Before the silent ones came, we lived in sunlight, up there.’ She pointed upwards, where arrow-straight trunks lifted off from their cradles of roots, though she did not look, too afraid or too saddened by what had happened. ‘Up there are our homes. That is our world, not this place. Up there, there is no mould. The air is clear. The weather is warm. We had good lives.’

  ‘The nature of this world’s purpose?’

  ‘The production and export of chemical products derived from the great fungi,’ she said. ‘Their wood is no good. It is black-hearted, rots quickly. No use for building, but when bled and boiled it gives useful liquors. We had our duties to the Imperium, and we fulfilled them.’ She dared to look back again. ‘All we wish is to do so again, to live in the sun and pay our dues to the God-Emperor. We worked hard. We prayed hard. I am so sorry about what has happened here. Please, let the Emperor know we are sorry for whatever we did to anger Him and bring this disaster on ourselves. I am so sorry the Red Angels came to help us, and this happened. I–’

  ‘What happened here is not your fault,’ said Astorath bluntly. ‘You have done no wrong. If you had, I would kill you, but you need not fear punishment from me. Unless there is some element of your tale that is deserving of harsher judgement?’

  She shook her head. ‘None, no, my lord. We did nothing. We are victims. I think. Maybe the meat… Maybe we poisoned him?’

  ‘All humanity is a victim in these dark times. If you speak the truth, you have nothing to fear. You did not poison him. Continue your tale.’

  ‘The rift came, and the sky turned sick. The silent ones came soon afterwards. They appeared in nightmares at first, pale, naked things, the size of half-grown children, pot-bellied, long arms, horrible in proportion, but their faces were the worst. They were blank, no eyes or nose, only a curved mouth full of jutting teeth. We all dreamt about them, standing in the corner of our sleeping chambers, staring at us.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘It didn’t take long for us to realise that we dreamed of the same things, of silent, pale faces with no eyes. A few panicked children was all it took. Word got round. We were afraid.

  ‘We worked on as best we could. Then the tithe ships stopped coming. Then the merchantmen. We produce enough food for ourselves, but are dependent on outsiders for many other things. We sent out messages from our astropaths in the capital, but got no reply. They tried harder, until one by one they went mad, and so Count Mannier ordered no more attempts be made, in order to save the last.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Decades ago. I was young then, old enough to remember how things were. There are no sky-speakers now. Some of what I relay to you was told to me by my mother.’

  ‘You speak of matters dealt with by the planetary government.’

  ‘My mother was adviser to the count. I am of noble birth,’ she cackled. ‘Though you would not believe it now.’

  ‘Continue.’

  ‘The dreams became worse. Then they stopped being dreams. We woke in the night to find the silent ones looking at us. They’d vanish, after a while, but they were there. We had picts and vid-captures.’ She went quiet. ‘Then, after a little longer, they started to hunt us.’

  They passed along a road broken to useless slabs by fungal roots.

  ‘We killed a few, they were flesh and blood it seemed, and it gave us heart. But they came and went as they wished. We struggled to trap them. We couldn’t see them. They picked us off at their leisure. We were afraid to sleep. So many of us died in nights of terror, and we were driven from our homes, down here. They didn’t come down here so much, on account of the spores maybe. We managed to hold on, but we were dying slowly. The count took the chance with our last astropath and sent the message – I was a girl still then. It took so long to answer, we didn’t think anyone would come. Then your brothers arrived, and they were cunning and brave and killed many of the silent ones. Everything looked like it would be good again. It was, for a while. They took back this township for us, so we could look on the sun. They drove the creatures deeper into the forest. We began to rebuild.’

  They reached a stairway choked by the outgrowths of the tree it circled, and started to climb upwards.

  ‘Then your brother took the ordes meat, and suddenly it wasn’t good any more.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’

  When Astorath and Artemos arrived in the reclaimed township they found their brothers out on patrol, and so settled down to wait for their return in a room in a derelict habitat.

  ‘We should consider the possibility that this entire planet must be purged,’ said Artemos, speaking by private helm-to-helm vox ‘You heard what she said.’

  ‘The old rules are not so rigidly applied,’ said Astorath. ‘Word of daemons has spread now. Once, even you would not have known of them, brother. How can knowledge of them be hidden when they walk openly across the galaxy?’

  ‘Knowledge isn’t what bothers me,’ said Artemos. He lifted a ragged curtain and glanced out through a cracked window. The habitat overlooked a landscape of lacy branches that moved in the light of the planet’s moon. ‘This whole place might be tainted. You know what it’s like when they get their fingers in the minds of men.’

  ‘If every world that had known the touch of the daemon since the rift opened was laid waste, there would be no Imperium left,’ said Astorath. ‘Purity of thought is the best safeguard. The question of whether this world is tainted is for others to answer. It is not obviously so, and we do not have the resources to deal with it if it is. Our mission is to secure our missing brother.’

  Artemos shrugged. ‘You are right. I speak prematurely. The things here could have been Chaos-warped predators, rather
than daemons. Or they could be a strange kind of xenos. Some of those things the aeldari consort with.’ He shook his head and let the curtain drop. ‘Xenos or daemon, they are filth, all of them. The galaxy is not what it was. The old evils come sneaking out of the shadows.’

  ‘Put these questions from your mind, Brother-Priest,’ said Astorath. ‘Whatever they are, they are not our business. Mercy for the lost is our sole concern.’

  They waited a few hours for the Blood Angels assigned to Asque to return to the outpost. A single half-squad had been sent, and there were three of them left, all Primaris Marines. They were not surprised to find Astorath at the township.

  ‘I am Brother Fidelius, 11th squad, Third Battle Company, acting sergeant,’ said the warrior who led them. ‘These are Edmun and Caspion. You are High Chaplain.’

  ‘I am,’ Astorath confirmed.

  ‘Then I greet you as my lord.’ Fidelius dropped to his knee and bowed his head.

  ‘May the blessing of the Angel’s virtues and graces fill you and carry you through battle, my brother. Now rise.’

  Fidelius stood again.

  ‘Who is the one who is afflicted?’ Astorath asked.

  ‘Brother-Sergeant Erasmus.’

  Astorath paused before asking his next question.

  ‘And is Brother-Sergeant Erasmus like you, or like me?’ The gravity of his question seemed to distort space around them.

  ‘He is not a Primaris brother, my lord, if that is what you mean,’ said Fidelius.

  ‘So you were deployed as a mixed squad?’

  ‘At our captain’s command,’ said Fidelius. He looked at his brothers. ‘We three were among those raised from the Great Blooding. We lack experience. Erasmus came to teach us.’

  ‘You fought as mortals on the walls of the Arx Angelicum?’

  ‘We did,’ said Fidelius. ‘There were four of us Primaris Marines, until the xenos things slew Brother Aelus. The four of us and Erasmus were deemed enough for the task at hand, but these things are slippery, and claimed their due in blood. Erasmus said…’ He shared a look with his brothers. Astorath recognised it, for he had seen it many times – the look of a Blood Angel exposed for the first time to the effects of the Rage. ‘Erasmus said Aelus made a grave error, and that we must learn from it. He said that Aelus’ death was fair exchange for the thousands of their dead, and we will avenge him. We were looking for the silent ones when you arrived. They stay away from the population now. We’ve cleansed most of this sector. We’ll get the rest.’