Blood Rite - Rachel Harrison Read online

  More Space Marines from Black Library

  CRUSADE & OTHER STORIES

  Various Authors

  • MEPHISTON •

  by Darius Hinks

  Book 1: BLOOD OF SANGUINIUS

  Book 2: REVENANT CRUSADE

  • DARK IMPERIUM •

  by Guy Haley

  Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM

  Book 2: PLAGUE WAR

  DEATHWATCH: SHADOWBREAKER

  by Steve Parker

  SPEAR OF THE EMPEROR

  by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Space Marine Conquests

  THE DEVASTATION OF BAAL

  A Blood Angels novel by Guy Haley

  ASHES OF PROSPERO

  A Space Wolves novel by Gav Thorpe

  WAR OF SECRETS

  A Dark Angels novel by Phil Kelly

  OF HONOUR AND IRON

  An Ultramarines novel by Ian St. Martin

  APOCALYPSE

  A Primaris Marines novel by Josh Reynolds

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  One

  Two

  Three

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker’

  A Black Library Publication

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

  Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  ONE

  BROTHERS

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  The company standard is dappled with blood. To Thaneod Darrago, the pattern of it looks like a starfield painted in negative. Some of the blood is old. Very old. Some is new, and belongs to his brothers, both lost and living. It is the blood of Sanguinius. Angels’ blood. The same as Darrago’s own. As he smooths the standard flat with care, he catches the scent of it. It is rich and familiar, a contrast to the cool, recycled air of his quarters aboard the Blood Angels strike cruiser Sanguine Tear. Like the rest of the ship, Darrago’s quarters are clad in iron and gold, but unlike the grand halls and the decorated, ornate bridge, they are spare. Darrago’s work station takes up most of the space. It is a smooth marble surface on which the company standard lies under lumens that are warm and yellow like sunlight. Stylised skulls set into the walls watch him from blank eye sockets as he lays out his tools. Needles made from fine steel. Golden thread, carefully woven by Chapter thralls at the Arx Angelicum. They are fine things. Delicate things.

  ‘In blood are we made,’ Darrago says, as he sets about his work.

  The fine steel needle is as familiar to him as his weapons and wielded just as easily in his badly scarred hand. The standard is his to bear. His to carry, to mend and to care for. His to stitch with new glories, in golden thread. It is scarred, as he and his brothers are scarred. It has been mended one thousand times, by one hundred hands, but Darrago knows well enough that it is impossible to ever truly reverse damage once it has been done. You can overstitch it. Strengthen weak areas and restore faded glories. You can even conceal damage, if you so wish.

  But you cannot undo it.

  ‘Company Ancient.’

  Darrago looks up at the words. The speaker is one that he expected, though that does nothing to lessen the cold weight that accompanies his presence, and the questions that Darrago knows he will ask.

  ‘Well met,’ Darrago says. It is hard to mean the words because there is only one thing that calls this particular brother of his.

  Blood.

  His brother approaches. He is clad not in robes, but in full battleplate. It growls in the silence like a caged thing. He remains standing, though there is space to sit, because he is not the type to rest.

  ‘You know why I am here,’ his brother says.

  Darrago nods. ‘Because of Luminata,’ he says. ‘The shrine of Sanguis Gloria.’

  ‘And the chalice,’ his brother says, looking down at the standard. ‘A new glory for your banner.’

  ‘Not a glory,’ Darrago says, and he goes back to his work.

  ‘What, then?’

  Darrago keeps his eyes on the shape of the chalice as he re-makes it in thread.

  ‘A memorial,’ he says. ‘Something to commemorate.’

  There is a pause, during which Darrago can hear the low rumble of the Sanguine Tear as she plies the warp, and the beat of his hearts, quickened by memory.

  ‘The chalice held at Sanguis Gloria was said to be an immaculate vessel,’ his brother says. ‘It was said that our father himself gave it to the people of Luminata as a show of faith.’

  ‘I know the stories,’ Darrago says. ‘We all know the stories.’

  ‘Yet corruption was drawn to the chalice,’ his brother says. ‘Evil sought it out, to use it against us. To twist the immaculate and make violence of it.’

  Darrago stops his work. ‘I saw what was done on Luminata,’ he says. ‘I saw the chalice taken by traitors. I saw the shrine afire. I saw the storm they meant to make, and what it took to stop it.’

  His brother is silent for a moment. His dark eyes do not flicker. Do not blink. Darrago knows that the stillness is momentary. That his brother can be swift and violent.

  Merciless.

  ‘And what did it take to stop it?’ his brother asks.

  Darrago’s eyes fall to the half-made chalice. He remembers Donato, bowed.

  Sanyctus, screaming.

  ‘Great sacrifice,’ Darrago says. ‘And angels’ blood.’

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, THEN…

  The shrine of Sanguis Gloria stands astride the pilgrims’ city below. An angel, carved from the white face of the tallest mountain on Luminata, it wears the cloud layer for a crown, and casts long shadows with its wings. Long enough for thousands of pilgrims to stand in and sing their hymns. They move as the shadows move with the sun, but they never stop their singing. It carries upwards on coursing winds. A constant chorus. Standing in the shadow of Sanguis Gloria and being surrounded by the roar of the pilgrims’ song is a memory that Thaneod Darrago holds on to. One that reminds him of all of the ways that mortal hearts can be good.

  Which is especially important when they fail.

  He watches through the eyes of his brothers on the ground and in the shrine, through a dozen pict-feed link
s broadcast directly onto his helm’s display from the Blood Angels fighting on Luminata. He sees the sky twist and burn around the shrine of Sanguis Gloria. Clawed clouds, and lightning earthing in reverse, reaching up to strike at the sky. He sees bodies fall from the platform built into the shrine’s summit to join the others that lie broken at the foot of it, where the pilgrims once sang. A pool of blood grows around them like another long shadow. Darrago sees cultists wrapped in bloodstained bandages torn apart by bolter fire, dying for those that twisted them and turned them against the Emperor. Lastly, Darrago sees warriors clad in crimson and silver that burn with witchlight and wickedness. Heretic Astartes.

  Word Bearers.

  Darrago’s hearts thunder at the sight of them. The marks they wear. The darkness that follows them. Darrago has a great capacity for hatred. Of the alien. Of the mutant. But no hatred burns as fiercely for him as that he holds for the heretic. For those who turned their backs on their brothers and embraced Chaos.

  The feed flickers and distorts. Over the roars and battle cries of his brothers, somehow Darrago catches the sound of whispers. The words are reversed, just like the lightning. Demented, hollow echoes that sound like gasping breaths. He grits his teeth and shuts it out, then winds his fingers tight around the standard he carries and takes his place alongside his First Company brothers on the teleportation dais, because the time has come for the Archangels to join battle. Each of them has a particular space on the dais amidst the warding words set in gold. Those words are ancient, much older than the Tear herself. Darrago can see where they have been flash frozen by repeat teleportations, leaving micro fractures running through the gold. Too many to count. Eleven of his brothers stand on the dais around him, clad in scarlet and gold. Command falls to Larracus Donato. The captain is a veteran amongst veterans, his mastery of battle-craft rarely matched. If Donato is the Archangels’ tactical mind, Darrago is their soul. The company standard is not the only thing to fall under his care. He watches over his brothers, too.

  Darrago looks to Radst Phaello first, and the four members of his squad. Sanguinius’ blood runs in every one of them, but Sergeant Phaello is the one who most resembles the graven images of their father. The Angel, serene. That composure of his carries over into battle, where Phaello is deliberate and measured. The other four veterans are sworn to the giant, Diordis Victorno. Like Phaello, he is fair and pale. Where Phaello is serene, though, Victorno is fierce like the radstorms of Baal. He favours the thunder hammer and the heart of a fight, as do those who fight with him. They are the Archangels’ wrath. Darrago knows that to be particularly true of one of his brothers. The one he has known for the longest time, and whom he watches with the most care.

  Adiccio Sanyctus.

  He stands beside Victorno now, curling and uncurling his hands in their lightning claw gauntlets. He goes without his helm, and his one remaining eye is furious and dark.

  ‘Adiccio,’ Darrago says, using his given name because he knows it will cut through, like it did on Kalatar.

  Sanyctus looks at him. Of all of Darrago’s brothers, he is one of the most scarred. He has been mended nearly as many times as the company standard, but with nowhere near the artistry.

  ‘Thaneod,’ he says. ‘We must go. Now.’

  Darrago has never known Sanyctus to be patient, but with every battle, the urgency in him grows. It becomes more vicious and desperate.

  Darker.

  ‘The lesson,’ Darrago says. ‘Do you remember?’

  It takes a moment, but then his brother blinks. There is a flicker in the snarl of scar tissue that is all that remains of Sanyctus’ right eye as the lid tries to close.

  ‘I remember,’ he says.

  Sanyctus stops curling his hands inside his gauntlets. He lifts his helm and locks it in place, and his scars and his fury are hidden behind a beautifully artificed mask of red ceramite.

  ‘Tur Zalak and his coven have taken the Crown.’ Captain Donato’s voice carries easily, without needing to be raised. The seals affixed to his Terminator plate catch gently in the recycled air as the vox-spoiled sound of war echoes in Darrago’s ears. The pict-feed shown to him is a frozen, flickering image of the shrine of Sanguis Gloria, seen from the air. The angel’s eyes are dark hollows that billow black smoke. Dark stains run down the shrine’s marble face like tears. ‘The storm is their doing. They have used it to blind our Librarius and blunt our aerial assaults.’ Donato’s voice is cold. ‘The Word Bearers intend to despoil the shrine of Sanguis Gloria, and Luminata with it.’

  He pauses. His face is set, but Darrago sees the fury in the captain’s eyes.

  ‘It is not just the Crown that the heretics have taken,’ Donato says. ‘They have also taken the chalice.’

  ‘The bastards will burn,’ Victorno says. He slams the haft of his thunder hammer on the dais. ‘Every one of them.’

  Donato nods. ‘We will restore the shrine of Sanguis Gloria, and we will recover the chalice. None shall stand against us.’

  Darrago answers alongside his brothers.

  ‘None shall survive our wrath!’ they roar together.

  ‘In Sanguinius’ name,’ Donato says.

  The words conjure the pilgrims’ song once more in Darrago’s mind. The glory he felt at the sound of it. At standing in the shadow of great wings, on a world on which his father is said to have set foot. Then the teleportarium lights turn white and the storm surrounds him.

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  ‘The chalice. You said before that you know the stories.’

  Darrago nods. He has abandoned his work on the company standard. It seems in poor taste to do it in the face of these questions. In the face of this particular brother.

  ‘Do you believe them?’ his brother asks.

  Darrago exhales slowly. He sets to winding the golden thread he has been using back onto the spool. It catches the lumen light and glitters. The spool is made from carved bone that has been polished so smooth it could be mistaken for something made, and not something grown.

  ‘I served on Luminata long ago. Before the Archangels, when I was of the battle companies. I spent one month at the shrine as part of the standing guard,’ he says. ‘As one of the ten who always remain to watch over the chalice and the shrine built in our father’s name.’

  ‘Remained.’ There is no change in his brother’s face, but his choice of words is cold and deliberate.

  ‘Remained,’ Darrago says, with a nod. ‘I looked upon the chalice once in that time.’

  ‘And what did you feel?’ his brother asks.

  Darrago thinks about it. It had seemed small and delicate, made from thin-spun gold. The face of the chalice was without blemishes or the tarnish of age. It was a small and delicate thing, yes, but a perfect thing too.

  ‘I felt pride,’ he says. ‘Awe.’

  ‘Then you believe that it was indeed crafted by the primarch’s hand?’

  Darrago shrugs. He puts the wound spool back into the heavy wooden box it came from, nestling it among rolls of crimson silk.

  ‘That I do not know. You asked what I felt, and that is my answer.’

  ‘There are those among us who would have taken the chalice from Luminata if they could have,’ his brother says. ‘That would have sooner seen it cared for at the Arx Angelicum, with the other Chapter relics. Who considered mortal hearts much too weak to trust with such a thing.’

  ‘It is true that there is weakness to be found in mortal hearts,’ Darrago says. He thinks of those who shed their faith and devoted themselves to Tur Zalak and his lies. Who turned on each other and against those sent to save them. But then Darrago thinks too of those who sang at the foot of Sanguis Gloria when he first set foot on that world, all those years ago. Of the roar of the song. The way it carried on the wind and rang from the marble.

  ‘But there is strength in mortal hearts, too. Perhaps that is what our father saw, if the stories are to be believed.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ his brother allows, and for the
first time there is a small change in his face.

  A moment of understanding.

  ‘And what of the second time you saw the chalice?’ his brother asks. ‘What did you feel then?’

  Darrago remembers reaching the Crown on the day of the battle. Or night. By then it had become so dark that it was hard to tell the difference. He remembers the chalice, small and delicate. Surrounded by balefire and warpstuff and the whispers of heretics. It was a point of light in the darkness that flickered and failed as he looked upon it. He remembers seeing his brothers fall around him. Seeing them succumb to the storm.

  ‘I felt despair,’ he says, because he cannot lie. He will not. ‘It was blackening as I looked at it. Becoming spoiled.’

  ‘Flawed.’

  The word is cold, and heavy. Deliberate, just like all of his brother’s words.

  Darrago nods. ‘Yes,’ he says.

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  Teleportation is both instant and endless. A barrage of noise and of nothingness. This time, though, something influences the jump. Something great and dark that brings with it the sound of whispers played in reverse. He sees his brothers, lost and living. He sees the heart of the storm. The ritual site. The Dark Apostle, Tur Zalak. His eyes are shadowed pools and his smile is one made of needle teeth. Last of all, Darrago sees the chalice, said to have been given by Sanguinius to the people of Luminata. It fills with blood until it spills over the sides. The smell of it is strong. Rich and familiar.

  Angels’ blood.

  Then the endless instant is over, and Darrago opens his eyes.

  He has fallen to one knee. The rough stone floor around him is cracked and slicked with hoarfrost. Darrago still holds tight to the company standard, keeping it aloft despite almost falling himself. The thin coating of ice that has spread across his armour shatters and flakes off as he stands and takes in where he is. He raises his storm bolter and points it into the half-dark.

  ‘This is not the Crown,’ he says.

  The chamber is a vast ossuary, built from and decorated with the timeworn bones of the dead. According to Darrago’s helm display, it lies over a kilometre down from the Crown. Warm, dry air hits him, carrying with it the scent of old parchments and older bones. Dust and grit falls from the arched ceiling far above, ringing against Darrago’s armour as the shrine tremors around him. Just like during the jump, the sound of whispers surrounds him. Nonsense words, spoken in reverse. Dozens of shadows move between the streams of dust. Fast, erratic shadows, clad in shifts and linen bindings and masks made of bloodstained sackcloth. They carry glittering, hooked blades.