Inheritor

  Inheritor

  Gav Thorpe

  The Abyssal Situlate would come. Orisons of pain would call him. Lamentable prayers would build the bridge. The ecstasy of faith would open the gate. As he had been instructed, so Torquill Eliphas would obey. As had been laid down in the Architectus Paternus, so the Word Bearer would act.

  ‘Soon,’ he told his companions. ‘Soon the consecration will be upon us and our labours fulfilled. Glories undreamed-of and rewards everlasting shall be ours.’

  Clad in armour of dark red and gold – the drab plate of the old Legion obscured beneath layers of enamel just as the old rites had been replaced by new sacraments – Eliphas epitomised the grandeur and celebration of the reborn XVII Legion. The new lacquerwork blotted out his old hierarchical symbols, but in gold and rubies was picked out the icon of the Ark of Testimony Chapter.

  He was Chapter Master no longer. Soon, he would be so much more.

  He bore a large mace, as much a sceptre of office as a weapon. From the pierced head drifted clouds of crimson incense whose sweet scent left a bitter aftertaste. Its specific compound had been developed to induce a slightly stimulated state, even in the adapted physiology of a Space Marine. Near-constant exposure left Eliphas twitchy, his pupils dilated to the extent that his eyes appeared black. He was never still, his gaze always moving from one point to another, fingers flexing on the haft of the mace and fidgeting with the snakeskin-bound grip of the pistol holstered at his hip.

  Eliphas’ roaming stare moved across the edifice he had raised, ignoring his two fellow Word Bearers as he spoke.

  ‘Now is the greatest moment of our lives. Now our service shall be renewed and our efforts redoubled that we might herald the Epoch of Changes. An empire laid waste, its ruins a dedication to the Abyssal Situlate. Five hundred worlds drowned in blood, scoured by fire, in revenge for fair Monarchia.’

  ‘It is not enough, Inheritor,’ growled Achton. Like his commander, Khyrior Achton wore the new livery of the Legion. On a long stave he bore an icon wrought from eight gilded skulls, set upon an octagon of silvered thigh bones. When he spoke, the vexillary’s deep voice was edged with bitterness. ‘A thousand worlds would not repair such hurt. The wound is in our souls where no salve can reach.’

  The third warrior of the XVII wore the original grey of the Legion, the surface of his armour marked by scripture dedicated to the Emperor – now struck through in many tracts, the meanings of others amended by subtly ironic additions that turned entreaties into insults, benedictions into curses. Though outwardly the least changed of the trio, Gorvael Yoth was the most learned in the works of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron.

  While it had been Eliphas’ energy and vision that had brought the Templum Daemonarchia into existence, it had been shaped by the knowledge and calculations of Yoth.

  Eliphas said nothing as he admired the construction wrought by their slaves, rendered breathless by its magnitude and magnificence. If one looked closely there might have been a wet glimmer in his eye, though he would have claimed it was simply the reflection of Kronus’ sun.

  The cathedral of impurity towered two hundred metres into the sky, built from the ruins of the flattened city of Typhaedes on the Deimos Peninsula. Though masonry and mortar formed its foundation – looted from court precincts and tithe yards, senatorial palaces and communal solisternia – the true beauty of the edifice was in the human materials bound within its construction. Their sacrifice to honour the Abyssal Situlate would remain forever, an immortal end for benighted mortals. Eliphas looked upon their physical remains and, for a moment, he almost envied them their eternal peace.

  Some had been preserved intact, particularly the youngest, their skin like alabaster, their innocent faces raised to the sky with expressions of beatific torment. When he closed his eyes and pictured them, Eliphas could hear the screams of despairing adulation trapped within the transparent lacquer that coated each of the one thousand cherubic figures arrayed in a tightening spiral around the immense pilaster.

  The chorus of their death-shrieks vibrated on the very edge of hearing, unheard by the mundane but projecting a clear signal that rippled out across the empyrean. It would carry Eliphas’ message to the Abyssal Situlate and the favour of the great master would fall like manna upon him.

  The other nine thousand souls bound within the awe-inspiring monument of the templum had been rendered down to their essence, to the bones upon which weak flesh had been hung. Of these, three thousand were intact skeletons, arrayed artfully as a parade of the dead dancing and feasting as they marched into the heavens. The artistry belonged to Eliphas, but the precisely calculated angles of each body belonged to Gorvael Yoth. Between them they combined the science and aesthetic of the immaterial, that mystical yet attainable balance point between the everyday and the divine, the real and unreal, the mortal universe and the warp. The Golden Gate, it was called colloquially by the lower ranks – a crude euphemism but one that served its purpose. The Templum Daemonarchia would be like a gate once activated, and through it would arrive the Abyssal Situlate to lay down praises upon those that had built such a wonder.

  Of the remaining cadavers, all but eight were no more than skulls used to pave the road before the macabre procession and to act as the sacred constellations in the sky above them on this arcane tableau.

  The last handful adorned the Primordial Sun of Achton’s standard, which would be set upon the monument at the required moment, a lightning rod for all the powers of the Daemonarchia.

  Thus would the bridge be built and the path laid.

  The entire tower throbbed with latent energy, silently singing with the souls of the blessed deceased. Eliphas could only imagine what it would feel like when the templum was empowered.

  With each passing moment he admired anew the wonderfully grotesque lines and confluences of the strangely angled edifice. In places it seemed to bare teeth made of ribs, in others it was as flat and smooth as the gulf between stars, the dark marble seeming to swallow his gaze. Elliptical spirals and geometric concatenations drew the eye in strange directions, making even Eliphas’ head spin, despite his artificially augmented sense of balance. The rapidly narrowing point of the tower, the forced perspective against the overcast sky, drew one up into the heavens with vertiginous swiftness.

  And it was still not complete. A scaffold of wooden towers and decks linked by rope ladders jutted impossibly from the narrow but soaring building. Pulleys and tackles hung like spider’s webs, used to move the immense blocks of basalt and granite, sandstone and marble from the base of the tower to their final positions.

  Shaped by a team of seventy-three masons – many of whom had been only too willing to work to Yoth’s plans to build the tower rather than become part of it – each block had been stained pale red, anointed with blood from the sacrificed. They were fixed in place with mortar mixed from the same and liberally thickened with bone powder. Thousands laboured at the winches to manoeuvre the great slabs and bricks into place. They worked without harness or rope – more than a hundred had fallen to their deaths in the last two days, and a similar number had been crushed against the growing walls by swaying blocks, or bludgeoned by snapping scaffold.

  All in all, a hundred thousand souls of Kronus had given up their tedious mortal existence for the greater glory of the Abyssal Situlate.

  The last of the foursome viewing this majestic enterprise was Vostigar Catacult Eres. He was a little shorter than Eliphas, by just two or three centimetres, but was broader in shoulder and chest. His armour was layered with the polished sheen of gritty white ceramite, contrasting with his blue steel pauldrons and gauntlets. Upon his shoulder was wrought in brass a pair of jaws closing about a planet – the symbol of
the XII Legion. If one did not know his allegiance from such colours and icons, it would have been made obvious by his half-shaved skull, the left side of which was studded with exposed metallic implants. Mood-inhibitors and adrenal boosters, Eres and his brother World Eaters referred to them as ‘the Butcher’s Nails’ and seemed oddly proud of the fact that their brains had been tampered with. For Eliphas, such mechanical interference was a contravention of the bond between the corpus and the soul, but he was wise enough not to cause any insult to the temperamental captain.

  Eres stood with arms crossed and looked at the templum. Two curved chainswords hung at his hips, and the right vambrace of his war-plate was mounted with a boltgun mechanism fed by a belt of ammunition linked to his modified backpack. The plates at his elbows and knees, as well as his boots, sported serrated blades specially angled to allow him to use his arms and legs as weapons in close fighting.

  ‘This is what you wanted all the bodies for?’ the World Eater asked. He turned his incredulous gaze on Eliphas. ‘It’s ugly. Why would you build such an abomination? What does it do?’

  ‘Do?’ Yoth sneered and turned on the World Eater before Eliphas could reply. ‘It channels. It absorbs. It magnifies. It contorts. It takes the energies of the other-realm and spirals them through a complex system of decantations and alphanumerical mysti-rhythms, until it creates a condensed immaterial formwork derived from quarto-potentials bonded to a semi-scaling decline rift. It is a construction of epic nature – those physical properties you deem ugly are mirrored by a conversely beautiful but invisible balance and poise of preternatural accuracy and function. One might just as well set eyes upon the opening blossom of a dawnrose and complain that the edges were a little ragged.’

  Yoth turned breathlessly back to his creation and was clearly about to continue, but Eliphas intervened.

  ‘It is equally a beacon, a bridge and a gateway, kinsman,’ he said. He understood his companion’s frustration, but it served nobody’s purpose to antagonise their ally. Trying to explain to the purely military mind of Eres the aetheric interplays brought about by the unique construction of the templum was akin to describing the glory of a rainbow to a blind fish. He waved a hand in agitation as he struggled to find the words that would convey the multi­dimensional elegance of it. ‘It is… It is both the messenger and the message. The herald and the clarion. The slaver and the slave.’

  ‘I see,’ said Eres, tapping the fingers of one hand on his arm as he looked again at the huge tower. ‘I thought it was supposed to be some kind of teleporter.’

  Eliphas cringed inwardly at the simplistic nature of Eres’ worldview, but managed a smile. ‘Aye. In a very distant way, it is.’

  ‘Why do we need one?’ asked Eres. He opened his arms and gestured towards their surroundings. Typhaedes was a desolate ruin for five kilometres in every direction. ‘You have two hundred warriors. I have five times that number. The people of Kronus are broken. What need do we have of a giant, mystical teleporter?’

  ‘Kronus is a step, a means to a greater end. When the Abyssal Situlate comes before us, we shall be ushered into the new dawn. Forget the petty ambitions of simple conquest, Eres. Not just the fiefdoms of Guilliman, but all of the Emperor’s domains shall be ours for the taking. Our goal is not the defeat of a single people – it is the avenging of the Emperor’s betrayal of our Legion. No more will we be taken as fools, the lives of our brethren expended for the grandeur of an uncaring god. Not again shall we suffer the ignominy of serving lesser mortals.’

  ‘And your tower will do that, will it?’ Eres shrugged. ‘How do you turn it on?’

  ‘In all bargains there is a price. It is paid in blood, sweat and toil.’

  ‘I see plenty of sweat and toil,’ said Eres. He grinned savagely. ‘When do you need more blood?’

  ‘So, their plan has worked?’ asked Khordal Arukka.

  Eres’ second-in-command did not look convinced as the two of them studied the orbital sensor sweeps at the control station in the back of the Achilles-pattern Land Raider transport. A prized headquarters vehicle, gifted to him by none other than Amandus Tyr of the Imperial Fists fourteen years and an age ago when they had fought together at Varleth Gorge. Arukka had slain Captain Nordas Vyre out of hand when he had tried to insist that Eres left the transport behind when departing with Eliphas.

  It had been a good signal of loyalty on his part.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Eres conceded. He looped back the data readings as he continued. ‘I admit, I was confused at first when Eliphas had insisted that we allow a few of the Ultramarines garrison to escape Kronus on that commandeered warp-trawler. It seemed folly to spare them in itself, and doubly so because they would doubtless take word of what occurred back to their commanders. I argued that the Ultramarines would surely respond and that we lacked the resources for a swift conclusion to the planetary occupation.’

  Arukka nodded. ‘I thought it oddly diplomatic of you at the time. You should have just taken the idiot’s head.’

  ‘The will of Angron was most specific, my brother. We were to extend our full co-operation to the sons of Lorgar. That we were saddled with this foam-mouthed disciple of madness doesn’t alter anything.’

  ‘He was exceptionally patronising, captain. He talked to us as though we were simpletons.’

  ‘He was and he did, and but for the demands of the primarch I would have ended him there and then. But you must remember, my brother, that words and deeds are not the same.’ Eres tapped a finger to his implant. ‘Rage begets rage – that is the pit that awaits us. I have warned you before that we should not waste the gifts of the Butcher’s Nails on inconsequential matters. In most concerns, we must kill cold and kill clean. Show no remorse but also feel no pleasure. Overuse of the implants reduces their effect with time, I believe.’

  ‘You are most peculiar for a World Eater, captain. There are few that share your view on the Nails.’

  ‘Which explains why I have been attached to these mumbling Word Bearer morons rather than fighting alongside our Lord Angron.’

  Eres paused, and checked the chrono-mark on the orbital readings. Four hours old.

  Why had Eliphas not released them sooner?

  ‘Many have thought me a fool, my brother. Their corpses have been forgotten. Eliphas courts disaster when his tongue runs away from him, but he knows that he needs me. It matters not whether I believe his great temple will bring their deliverer or not. He believes it, and that makes him beholden to us.’

  ‘Look at these time codes,’ said Arukka. ‘The Ultramarines response force must already be in range of the defence stations, but we receive no word that they have opened fire. It seems foolish to allow them to land without contest.’

  ‘That is because we are merely ignorant warriors, my brother,’ said Eres. He wound the readings forward and pointed to a screen. ‘The drop assault is imminent. Their blood on our ground, that is what the Word Bearers desire. To slay them in orbit, to scatter their atoms to the void, serves no purpose to our incense-huffing companion.’

  Eres turned and opened the assault ramp of the Achilles, flooding the interior with daylight. He strode out with Arukka at his heels, and looked up. There was a telltale glimmer in the upper skies – the first glint of descending drop pods would have been missed by any less experienced warrior.

  About him were arrayed his one thousand warriors, stationed in and around the templum. Linked by artificial causeways to the tower and each other, eight bunker-like outbuildings guarded the approach to the main gatehouse, forming ‘an abyssal star’ as Yoth had termed it.

  To Eres it was simply a convenient line of defence. World Eaters squads were positioned in the fortifications and amongst the ruins further out from the grotesque edifice.

  He looked at it now. The construction had been completed five days ago, the third after receiving confirmation from Eliphas that the Ultramarines had returned, an
d that the incoming task force numbered only two warships of any size. Had the Ultramarines taken the threat at Kronus seriously, the Word Bearers and World Eaters might well have faced several thousand warriors rather than a mere demi-company.

  ‘They come,’ he warned his legionaries across the vox, drawing his chainsabres. ‘Remember the request of the Word Bearer. Slay only in the precinct of the templum. Allow some to enter.’

  He lowered his voice and addressed Arukka. ‘A battle-barge and a strike cruiser. No more than five hundred warriors at most. It seems that Eliphas’ gambit has paid off. Concealing our presence has caused the enemy to underestimate the strength required to retake Kronus. Guilliman’s sons are about to receive a hot welcome.’

  ‘It feels counter to all of my instinct and training to willingly leave enemy to the rear,’ said Arukka.

  ‘We must trust the Word Bearers.’

  ‘Why?’

  The inquiry took Eres by surprise, not because it was a bad question, but because it had not occurred to him before. It took him some time to think of an appropriate answer.

  ‘Because if we cannot, this entire endeavour has been a monument to Eliphas’ vanity and nothing else. If that is the case, I shall present his head to Angron myself.’

  Arukka nodded, accepting his captain’s wisdom without comment. He pulled on his helm, its faceplate daubed with a red handprint across the snout and left eye. It had once been a bloody mark left by the first Raven Guard that Arukka had gutted at Isstvan, but the blood had dried and flaked away over time, and so he had decided to commemorate the moment in more permanent fashion.

  He was not alone. There were other affectations, some far more disturbing, creeping in across the formal blue-and-white of the Legion.

  Eres did not mind these slips in uniform discipline. There was little enough incentive for his warriors to band together as it was. They had heard nothing from their primarch in over forty days, nor from Legion command. The presence of Captain Vostigar Catacult Eres was all that reminded them that they were World Eaters at all, and he was not about to risk a mutiny by remarking on the daubed slogans and additions made by his warriors.