Champions All - Marc Collins Page 2

  He gritted his teeth and pushed in, past its guard. Drawing the sword in towards his body, he spun on his heel, letting it swing forth as he moved out and away from the ork. The beast’s arm followed him as it was sliced free from its body. His pistol came up as he stopped, and fired two shots into its skull. Its head snapped back in a shower of brain and bone fragments but he was already turning from it, forgotten like the vermin it was, to face the last of them.

  Champion and Sister struck as one, moving at almost the same moment. He brought his blade across its throat, while the Repentia went low and her chainblade hammered wetly at its knees. The beast was ripped apart, its body torn in opposing directions, scattered across the chamber. The woman was panting with exertion, but Cenric stood perfectly still. He raised the blade, touching it lightly to his forehead, before relaxing his stance.

  ‘Be at peace, Sister.’

  Her eyes snapped up to meet the lenses of his helm. She gritted her teeth and rose, her gaze never flinching from him. Votive parchment had stuck to her wounds, the blood obliterating whatever canticles of contrition had been written upon them. Her robes were rough-spun, threaded with barbs and thorns, smeared with blood from her injuries. He could see the remnants of wax, where her lips had been sealed shut. Her hair had been shorn crudely from her head in ragged lines, dark where it had already begun to grow back. She was the image of the humbled warrior. Yet still she fought, with a devotion that would put lesser men to shame.

  ‘You…’ She spoke in a rasp, her voice atrophied from lack of use. ‘He has sent you to me.’ She almost laughed, looking away lest the sight of him strike her blind. She fell to her knees, head bowed. ‘I am unworthy to stand in His light, by His Champion.’

  ‘I have watched you fight. Worthiness lies in the deeds done in the Emperor’s name. Rise.’ There was a deep respect in his every word, and she rose with the gesture of his hand. ‘I am Cenric, named Emperor’s Champion of the Black Templars.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

  ‘Penance,’ she hissed the word. ‘That is the name granted to me in mercy and contrition. I am Penance, or I am nothing.’

  ‘Penance.’ Cenric bowed his head. ‘A fine name.’ Her face creased with sudden anger, and for a moment he wondered if her blade would come up. White-knuckled hands were locked around the grip, and the chainblade revved with sympathetic fury.

  ‘A fine name? One born of shame? I had a name, before I was judged unworthy of holding it. I will claim that name again in death, my oaths fulfilled.’ She spat to one side, the saliva blood-flecked.

  ‘I meant no offence.’ He spoke the words in a peal of sincere thunder. ‘The Emperor tasks us with our finest work, in war and in peace. He expects our all, but many are found wanting. They could have executed you for your failings, as many amongst the Militarum are. Instead, you have the opportunity to erase your sin with blood. Yours or the enemy’s. It makes little difference to Him on Earth.’

  She looked away, as though burned. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ she swallowed, the admission bitter. ‘We yet live, and so have our chance for redemption.’ She cast her gaze skywards. ‘Do you think they endure? Your brothers, and my sisters?’

  ‘All things that serve Him persist in Him.’ Cenric spoke the words almost by rote. ‘If they continue to fight, then there is hope.’ He raised his sword, pointing it towards the catacombs ahead of them. The blade’s black metal was aglow with the caged lightning of its power field, a blazing beacon to light their way in the darkness. ‘The only way out of the abyss is through.’ He turned back to her, his helm impassive yet burning with the majesty of his calling.

  ‘Will you rise with me, Sister?’

  For a time, they advanced in silence.

  Both of them stared at the walls of the defiled tunnels. The crude script carved over sacred inscriptions and the murals profaned with alien filth. The stonework beneath their feet was already beginning to crack as xeno-fungal growths wormed their way up from the earth below. Fingered protrusions tasted the air, staining the close atmosphere with spores and the gentle light of bioluminescence. They could have been beneath some strange ocean, rather than trapped in the bowels of a temple to the Emperor.

  The walls shook with the distant sound of battle, palsied with the echoes of siege and defence. They could not tell who was winning, who held any sort of advantage. Bestial snuffling drifted through the empty corridors, but they saw no one. Perhaps all the enemy were above, set against their allies, and all that remained in the depths were the ghosts of the xenos, the shades of their brutal past.

  ‘How much further?’ Cenric asked as he paused, running his fingers along the intricately carved walls of the tunnel. They teemed with etched hymnals and prayers, where the passage of orks had not erased them and altered the directed song of the wind. He traced the words IMPERATOR GLORIANA with his gauntleted hand, lingering, considering.

  ‘We should be nearing the base of the cathedral. These tunnels are singing lines, meant to carry the song out across the plains to shepherd the faithful.’

  ‘You know them well, then?’ he said. Still his fingers danced across the words. He dwelt over warnings against pride, and the laxity that such vanity carried with it.

  ‘I once had the honour of patrolling them. The wind was bracing, the song…’ She trailed off. ‘I cannot describe it.’ Penance shook herself from her reverie, chastened by thoughts of nobler times. ‘I served my last posting in defence of the reliquaries.’ She looked at him, at the fixedness of his gaze. ‘Why do you tarry, Cenric?’

  ‘I–’ He paused, his fingers hovering over the inscription. He clenched them into a fist and turned from her and the carvings. ‘I meditate. Upon my duty to the Emperor and my responsibilities to the Chapter.’ He looked back. She was following him closely, and nodded her head as he spoke. ‘In duty are all things made pure. Even the most egregious of trespasses can be mended in service.’

  ‘As mine may be.’

  ‘As yours may be,’ he affirmed, and then held up his hand suddenly.

  Something rattled ahead of them, the sudden movement of steel on stone. He could hear the low growling of beasts, hungry and slavering. There was another rattle, the snap of chains going taut, and the enemy were before them in a sudden flash of stinking flesh and teeth.

  The five squig-beasts were rotund and blubbery, their hides scarred from pit fighting and idle malice. Their eyes were frenzied, jaws foaming as the collars locked tight around what passed for their throats. He could see the beast master beyond them, chortling as it cracked the chains like whips to urge them on. The first creature hurled itself at Cenric, clamping its jaws around his sword arm. He backhanded it fiercely, his gauntlet driving into the side of its snout to the sound of shattering teeth. He smashed it against the wall, using his pinned arm to batter it into the cold stone. It let go with a yelp of surprise, coughing teeth and blood. Cenric brought his boot down on it, and it burst in a shower of quivering organs. Behind its pets, the ork gave a stunted cry that might have been amusement or grief. Cenric cared not. He stalked forward.

  Penance fell back, struggling to bring her Eviscerator to bear, her injuries bleeding with the effort. The teeth bit at the air and caught on the stonework, lighting the darkness with sparks and filling the tunnel with a dusty miasma. She braced herself, digging her feet into the floor as a beast hammered into her guard. The squig’s jaws clamped against the blade, and she shook it to dislodge it. It opened its mouth and roared as it tumbled back, tiny arms flailing, showering her with the debris of its last meal. Saliva and blood stained her holy weapon, and she bellowed her own rage back in its face.

  ‘You do not end me!’ Penance screamed as she hurled herself forward. The Eviscerator fell, and reduced the swollen beast to red ruin. She trod through the remains of it, swinging again and battering the next squig against the wall as she passed it. She drew level with Cenric and then turned.

  They fought, back to back. Penance lashed out against the two remaining beasts, guarding Cenric as he advanced upon their keeper. The ork grunted, and then lashed out with a thick club of knobbled metal. It cracked against his helm, and he reeled back before bringing his sword up. The crackling energy field split the darkness, and the ork stumbled, hurling insults in its guttural tongue. It fumbled for the pistol at its belt, getting off a single shot. The round scored across the side of Cenric’s pauldron, as he spun in and round. He thrust the Black Sword through its ragged breastplate, impaling the creature as it sputtered and snapped.

  The club came round again in great swinging strikes, cracking against his helm and chest-plate, before the ork began to slam it against the sparking power field of the sword. Its eyes were wide with pain and anger, and it battered the club against the sword until it broke and wept molten metal. It snarled, its toothed maw wide and glistening with spittle, mirroring its charges. Despite its wounds, it lunged forward and stabbed the ruined weapon at him. He bit back pain as the spur of metal lodged in the joint of his arm. His grip did not falter. He grabbed his bolt pistol, thrusting it into the beast’s hateful face.

  ‘Die,’ he spat. ‘Die, and blight His creation no more!’ Cenric fired, again and again, till the pistol rattled empty. The ork’s skull detonated, and Cenric took hold of the sword with both hands once more. He dragged it up and through the corpse, bisecting it completely. He turned in time to watch Penance hammer the last of the squigs into the ground. The gore seemed to halo her, for one moment rendering her as a–

  Crimson angel.

  Cenric shook off the vertigo of recognition, the near-gravitational pull of prophecy. Penance was panting, exhausted, bleeding. She turned her gaze to him again, and nodded s
imply.

  ‘We live, Champion.’

  ‘For the moment.’ He looked around. ‘Their numbers may grow from this point on.’ He shook his head. ‘You said we were near the cathedral’s base?’

  ‘More so now.’ Her lips opened in a hiss of pain as she forced herself to stand. Her legs trembled, but she steadied herself with the Eviscerator. ‘We go up. We fight, perhaps we die. But it is the will of the Emperor that we do so. It is the stoniest paths that lead surely to absolution.’

  ‘And the path set before us is rough indeed.’ He bowed his head in contrition. ‘I wonder how I found myself upon this road. Have I erred? Should I have cleaved closer to the Marshal? I was a mere initiate before He raised me up as His Champion. I have striven to be an exemplar of our creed – always forward, never showing cowardice in the face of the enemy.’ He looked to his sword, to the chains that bound it to him. As unyielding as honour. ‘Could I have done more?’

  ‘We can only do what the Emperor has set as our task. His is the ordered universe, His the tempered blade. We are all instruments in that design, implements under that aegis. I held rank, before. I was a Sister Superior, watching over the outer shrineholds.’ She paused, lost in memory. Tears streaked her ashen, bloody features. ‘I erred. I fought, and I lived, where my Sisters died. I could not save the relics. Thousands of years of history, ground to dust beneath their boots. While they laughed. They laughed. Had I the option then, I would have demanded I be nailed to a Penitent Engine, and cast into the fire of battle. This, though, is my reward.’ She swallowed hard before she continued. ‘But it is His plan that guides us. It is the God-Emperor’s will that has brought us to this moment. What is pride, next to that? What are our lives?’

  ‘From the mouths of the faithful.’ His voice was sombre, and she turned to him as he spoke, silently watching. He looked up, helm inclining as he considered their options. ‘Up then, as you say.’

  They climbed the steep ascent of a winding stairway, a narrow chamber that seemed more oubliette than thoroughfare. ‘The passages,’ Penance whispered. Once they had been used by the clergy; some brought them to the vaults with ease, others were for escape. There were fist-sized gouges in the walls, where munitions had detonated or great hands had torn in frenzy at the masonry. When the end had come, these passages had failed just as surely as the rest of the defences.

  They had climbed almost halfway up the stairs, Cenric moving gingerly as he eased his bulk around the turns while Penance hobbled behind him, when the first of the enemy became aware of them.

  Debris began to rain down, thrown with an almost childlike indolence, the whimsy of giants. A huge chunk of hewn stone split against the edge of the stairway. The bricks trembled. The mortar cracked. Both quickened their pace, forging on to the next landing. More debris impacted around them. The head of a saint shattered against Cenric’s chest, staggering him slightly. His vision clouded with dusted marble, and he barely had time to react before the offending ork had hurled itself down onto their level.

  An axe blade scraped across his battleplate, defacing the black paint of the Armour of Faith with a long gouge. He stepped back, almost knocking Penance off the platform. Without igniting the power field, he brought his sword down upon the ork’s head, denting its spiked iron helmet. It gurgled, bemused, and lashed out again. Cenric reached up, catching its wrist, before slamming his helmeted face into its gurning features. The ork stumbled backwards, filling the air with the mulchy stench of its blood. Cenric raised the blade two-handed above his head, as best as he could in such cramped conditions. As soon as he brought the flat of it straight down onto the ork’s skull, the field triggered with an ozone snap. The beast’s head burst with a thunderclap of force. He kicked the still-twitching corpse into the depths.

  ‘Dregs and stragglers remain. Outcasts, left to roam the deeps. If we can find the war-leader, and he has not committed his strength, then we can end this.’ He spoke the words with new certainty, cleansed in the baptism of blood and battle.

  They came to the top of the stairs and Penance took the lead. He was content to follow her. She had walked these halls, lived amongst them. The ruined grandeur of the great cathedral had been her home, and was now her hunting ground. They passed beneath broken arches, hung with scorched banners. Mosaics had been shattered to their component tiles, obliterating the faces of saints and heroes. The gilding of the floors was tarnished, thick with muck and condensation. Cenric trudged through it, even as the cacophony hit them.

  It was the primal howl of war, of massed cannons and artillery. The pounding of fists against chests, of bare flesh against stone, and the animal ululation of countless orks. And behind it all, woven through it, singing through the shattered airways of the temple itself, was a word. A war cry, a celebration.

  Grashbakh! Grashbakh! Grashbakh! GRASHBAKH!

  It took him a moment to realise it was a name. An entire army chanting one name, in one voice. A tribe honouring their chief. This was the malignant heart of their enemy’s forces. He could feel the air grow close and tight, electric with the anticipation of combat. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he saw again with the eyes of the divine. The Emperor Himself, reaching down, to take a hold of his senses.

  ‘Praise be.’ Cenric whispered the words in awe.

  All he could see was perfect golden light, its burning core beyond the next wall. It clawed at his sight – like fire, like fever, like the caress of stellar radiation.

  He strode forward, placed both hands upon the great oaken doors before him, and pushed his way into the sanctum.

  The chamber was dimly lit by crude low-burning firepits and by the wan sunlight that drifted through the broken windows; the remains of the stained glass cast it into strange, ethereal combinations, lending the great hall an unearthly feel. As though they had stumbled beyond the bounds of reality and into the hateful empyrean.

  At the centre there was an awkward assemblage of refuse, beaten and forged into the shape of a throne. Before it there seemed only more junk, in strange configurations. It took Cenric a moment to recognise it as the battlefield outside, rendered by barbaric hands in mockery of a strategium.

  Above it, the warboss towered.

  Grashbakh was enormous, a bloated example of its filth-breed. Plates had been hammered into its skin, the rivets lodged in burnt flesh. Its head had been bent, broken, reshaped and largely replaced by crude cybernetics. Iron teeth glistened wetly in a misshapen jaw, and the eyes that turned to meet them were mismatched: one bloodshot and glaring, the other a throbbing red bionic. A great iron claw flexed and crackled, large enough to encompass Cenric whole, while the other arm was gone, lost in a mismatched jumble of barrelled weapons. Cenric’s mouth twitched into a snarl at its living blasphemy, the hideous violation it represented. The arm twitched, drifting this way and that as it sought targets. The ork exuded threat, swathed in a miasma of murder.

  Cenric raised the Black Sword, tip pointed at the creature’s heart. ‘I name you Beast, and I condemn you.’

  Grashbakh snarled, a bellow of rage that hit him in a solid wall of sound. They were all moving; Cenric and Penance went left and right as the ork barrelled towards them. Weapons fire slashed across the length of the chamber, great solid shots that cratered the marble floors and lurid energy blasts that reduced columns to molten slag. The warriors ducked and weaved through the storm of fire, till they were beneath the arc of the guns, and their blades came round in their own arcs of destruction.

  Cenric went high, and the Black Sword carved great gouges from the warboss’ armour. Sheets of it fell away, smoking and warped. Penance swept in low, until the teeth of the Eviscerator were whirring and smoking against the stout plate of a bionic leg. She pulled the blade back, and spun away, swinging her weapon across its armoured back in a spray of sparks and shards. Cenric took advantage of the beast’s distraction, stabbing for its throat, but Grashbakh reached up and closed the blade in its own sparking fist as the claw’s power field engaged with a snap. Lightning danced between the competing weapons with a tortured whine. Cenric saw the sword, haloed in terrible light, trembling madly as the pressure between them built. He pushed, trying to drive it through the furious maelstrom, but it would not move. The ork’s eyes narrowed, and its maw twisted into a sneer of triumph. Even so, within its closed fist; the force of the caged energy was building to a crescendo. Cenric could still hear the thunderous roar of the chainsword as Penance moved about it, hacking and slashing. He could not even shout to warn her.