The Plagues of Orath Read online

  ‘Emperor save me,’ he breathed. ‘I have failed. I killed the beast, and still I have failed.’

  ‘Have you?’

  The Chaplain turned. Andronicus stood beneath the immense archway that formed the entrance to the chamber. The priest looked calm.

  Sentina flung out his arm. ‘Look, priest. The daemon is destroyed, yet the darkness remains. It grows. It will consume us all, and much more besides. I have failed again, and more will die by my failure.’

  ‘No, Manet. You haven’t. Not yet. One last test stands before you. Fail that, and we will all be lost. But for now, there is still a chance.’

  ‘You speak in riddles, old man. Come, we must leave here before we are consumed.’ Sentina picked up the priest. Holding him under one arm and Alia’s corpse under the other, he ran up the stairs.

  The pause was over. Whatever had stopped the daemonic hordes in their tracks for an instant had ended, and their fury was redoubled. Aeroth fired volley after volley from his grav-cannon, each wave of gravitic force tearing unnatural bodies asunder or smashing rockcrete and blasting them from their feet. It was to no avail. They were endless, and the Centurions were few.

  ‘On me,’ he ordered, his voice booming across the charnel ground that the courtyard had become. Oenomaus blipped an acknowledgement, as did Lentulus a second later. He heard the chatter of heavy bolters and the thunder of the titanic footsteps, and the young battle-brother came into view, his explosive rounds chewing up daemonic flesh with every step. Behind him was Lentulus. He wasn’t firing, instead using his lascannons as melee weapons, battering aberrant monstrosities aside with each blow. The pair fought their way over to their sergeant.

  ‘You have a plan?’ asked Lentulus.

  Aeroth laughed hollowly. ‘No plan but to die as brothers, fighting side by side.’

  Lentulus grunted. ‘Not your best effort, sergeant. But it’ll do.’

  ‘For Ultramar!’ shouted Aeroth, his words blasting from his vox-emitters across the din of battle. ‘Courage and honour!’ His brothers took up the cry as they opened fire on the daemons.

  ‘Courage and honour!’

  ‘Brother-sergeant.’ Sentina’s voice crackled across the vox.

  ‘Manet. You yet live?’ Aeroth couldn’t keep the joy from his tone. He turned towards the keep, searching for Sentina, crushing a pack of daemonic hounds with a gravitational blast as he did so, and firing a volley from his chest-mounted hurricane bolters. The mass-reactive shells tore apart a trio of sinister and sinuous daemons with features that were horrific and long claws in place of hands.

  By contrast, the Chaplain’s words were tinged with darkness. ‘Not for long, brother. The rift expands. It will consume us all. Fall back, get as far from here as possible.’

  ‘There is no falling back, brother.’ He swung and fired another grav-blast. ‘The enemy is everywhere. All we can do is go down fighting.’

  By his side, the other two Centurions poured las-fire and explosive bolts into the teeming hordes of warp creatures. ‘Is there nothing that can be done?’ asked Oenomaus through gritted teeth. ‘No way that we can close this portal and end this infernal invasion?’

  ‘There is always a way,’ replied Lentulus, launching a volley of frag missiles from his chest-launcher, sending shards of hot metal scything through a dozen twisted bodies. ‘But we can’t always see what it is.’

  ‘“Fight always with one eye on your objective and one on the reality around you. That way you can see when the path twists.” The wisdom of Thiel.’ Sentina’s voice was thoughtful. ‘Sometimes the path of light is obscured by darkness.’

  ‘I don’t recognise that second quotation,’ said Aeroth. ‘What are you talking about, Manet?’

  ‘Something the priest said.’

  ‘That old fool,’ spat Lentulus. ‘He’s senile.’

  ‘He may be wiser than any of us realise, brother. I have an idea.’

  ‘Is it a good idea?’ asked Aeroth.

  ‘No better than any of yours, Darin.’

  ‘I was afraid you were going to say that. What do you need us to do?’

  ‘Keep fighting. And if this works, don’t let Orath be abandoned. Don’t let our sacrifices be in vain. Keep this world alive, brothers. In Guilliman’s name.’

  ‘In Guilliman’s name,’ echoed Aeroth, instinct taking over. By the time he realised that Sentina had spoken of sacrifices, the Chaplain had cut the vox-link.

  ‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Oenomaus.

  ‘Something foolish and heroic,’ said Aeroth. ‘Let’s go and help.’ Turning slowly, the sergeant backhanded a blade-wielding, blood-soaked daemon so hard that its skull burst, and began to trudge through the press of bodies towards the keep.

  ‘One last chance,’ said Sentina. ‘What did you mean, priest?’

  They stood above the entrance to the tunnel, before the immense stone aquila. Andronicus rested against the sigil, leaning almost nonchalantly. He patted his robes and pulled out a battered canteen. Pulling the stopper out, he took a long swig before offering it to the Chaplain.

  ‘I don’t want a drink. I want answers. What did you mean? Is there still a way to stop this?’

  ‘You seem different, Manet. Why is that?’

  Sentina turned, frustrated, and punched the wall. Rockcrete cracked and dust billowed. ‘Answers, old man,’ he growled.

  ‘I don’t have answers. I only have the questions you need. Why are you different?’

  The Chaplain pointed to Alia’s body, small and frail-looking on the cold stone floor. ‘She died saving my life. She sacrificed herself for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she believed I could save her world. Because she…’ He trailed off.

  ‘Because she had faith,’ finished Andronicus.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what of your faith, Manet?’

  ‘What does that matter? Nothing has changed, and this is irrelevant. I need to close that rift. I need a… a weapon, or…’

  ‘Or armour?’ said the priest.

  ‘Armour I have. It is of no use.’

  ‘There is more than one kind of armour, Manet Sentina. What does your Codex Astartes have to say on the subject?’

  ‘Armour… You are babbling, old man. This is pointless.’ Sentina turned and strode from the chamber.

  Andronicus watched him go. ‘I have taken you as far as I can. The last step must be yours. Make the leap.’ Then he followed the Chaplain out.

  Sentina pulled his crozius arcanum from his belt as he stepped through the great archway into the carnage. Daemons were everywhere. The courtyard was simply a tide of them, as far as could be seen.

  ‘Servants of the Ruinous Powers,’ he bellowed, his vox-emitters magnifying his voice to deafening levels. ‘Come and face thy doom.’

  A trio of crimson-skinned warrior-beasts were the first to turn to him. They loped forward, hellblades gripped tight in taloned hands. They attacked as one, swinging the serrated swords to cleave Sentina apart. He blocked the first, ducked beneath the second and took the third on his chest. There was a flash as the conversion field in his rosarius turned the kinetic energy into a blinding glare.

  ‘By the Emperor’s light shall you know me, fiends. And by His wrath shall you fall!’

  He activated the crozius and swung it two-handed, relishing the shudder that went down his arms as it tore through the chest of one blood-soaked daemon and took the head from the shoulders of the second. He faced the third and smiled beneath his skull-faced helm. ‘I am His hand and I will be your doom. For the Emperor!’

  He swung again, sending the daemon flying backwards. It collided with a group of vaguely feminine creatures with claws, who were knocked sprawling. Before they could stand, they were torn apart by a volley of explosive rounds.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ echoed the voice of Sergeant Aeroth, swiftly followed by those of Oenomaus and Lentulus.

  ‘Brothers,’ said Sentina. ‘If we are to die this day, let us
die as heroes.’ He walked forward, and with each step, his maul swung, and with each swing daemonic flesh was rent, bones broken, corrupt blood spilled. Manet Sentina dealt death to the enemy as surely as the ancient myth his visage evoked. He fought his way to the Centurions, smashing through daemons great and small. When he reached them, Aeroth laid a huge hand on the Chaplain’s shoulder plate.

  ‘We may not save this world, or the sector, Manet. But we have done our duty.’

  ‘And only in death does duty end,’ replied Sentina.

  ‘And here comes the end,’ chimed in Lentulus, pointing. Sentina turned and followed his gesture. The archway entrance to the keep glowed with infernal energy. Balefire poured from it and the stone of the structure was warping and changing under the influence of the immaterial force. The rift was expanding up and out. Sentina felt a brief pang of shame. Alia’s body had been in there and he had left it. But then, it would be consumed regardless, as would they all soon enough.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sentina. ‘It ends here. But we have shown faith in the words of the primarch, brothers. We have fought to the end, and we shall fight on until death claims us.’

  ‘Manet,’ laughed Aeroth. ‘It’s been years since I’ve seen you so… fired up.’

  ‘I am a warrior of faith, Darin. I always was. I just didn’t always realise it until… until…’

  And then he understood.

  ‘Until? Brother, what changed?’

  Sentina didn’t answer. He was remembering the old priest’s words.

  There is more than one kind of armour, Manet Sentina. What does your Codex Astartes have to say on the subject?

  ‘I didn’t tell him my first name,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Who?’ asked Oenomaus, swinging his heavy fists at a mass of flesh with too many heads and legs that was trying to stab long, pincer-like fingers into his armour.

  ‘Armour…’ said Sentina. ‘Armour of faith.’

  ‘The Armour of Faith?’ grunted Lentulus as he loosed a lascannon round at a hulking bronze beast with a howling warrior-daemon on its back. It fell, a smoking hole through its middle. ‘I haven’t heard that passage from the Codex in decades. Allegory, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Sentina. ‘It’s salvation.’ He turned back to the three Centurions. ‘I can do it. It’s all about faith, Darin. Alia’s faith saved me. Now mine can save her world. I just have to make a leap of faith. Goodbye, brothers.’

  He turned and strode slowly towards the expanding mass of the portal. Daemons flocked to him, as if drawn by what he was about to do. He wrenched his helm from his head and mag-locked it to his belt. He wanted to look his fate in the eye. He swung his crozius, again and again, and began to chant.

  ‘Clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, that you might take your stand against the foe.’

  A gaggle of ever-shifting beasts in all the hues of the rainbow, and many never seen in nature, loped at him, witchfire burning around them. As they reached for him, as they touched his armour, they burned brighter for a moment and exploded. Faith was his shield now.

  ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the Ruinous Powers of the benighted warp and against the spiritual forces of evil in that infernal realm.’

  A huge plague daemon lumbered towards him, foul fluids dripping from its horns, rotten innards dragging along the ground behind it. The cruel blade clenched in its broken-fingered grasp hissed and bubbled with corruption, and tiny daemonlings capered around, on and even inside it. It meant to kill him before he could reach his goal. It would fail. Sentina ducked beneath its slow and clumsy swing and pushed forward, ramming the winged head of his mace into its stinking body and pulling upwards. The daemon burst apart in a shower of foul-smelling gore. Where it fell, it burned like acid, on stone and daemon alike. None of it touched Sentina, dissolving into vapour millimetres from his body. He strode on.

  ‘Therefore, clad yourself in full with the Armour of Faith, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand.’

  He stopped before the rift. It was immense now, stretching into the sky. The one above was huge too, reaching down to connect with the other, to form a greater portal into the realm of the Ruinous Powers. Sentina turned briefly and sketched a salute to his battle-brothers.

  ‘This is my stand,’ he shouted. ‘This is where the path of my faith has led.’ He turned back and stepped forward to be consumed by the rift, quietly mouthing his last words.

  ‘For Macragge. For the Emperor. For–’

  As the Chaplain disappeared into the roiling vortex of dark energy, the universe itself seemed to scream. A collective wail went up from the daemons, every one of them, a million otherworldly voices crying out. Aeroth felt it rather than heard it. And in that moment, he knew that Sentina had done the right thing.

  ‘Brothers,’ he growled. ‘In the name of Manet Sentina, let’s destroy them.’ He turned the gain on his grav-amp to maximum and began to fire. Each blast of his cannon tore daemons apart by the dozen. They seemed diminished, weaker, easier to destroy. He exulted in the carnage, in the catharsis it provided.

  Oenomaus followed his sergeant’s example. He checked the ammo counts for his weapons. Low, but enough to destroy a few more of the hellspawn. He stretched out his arms and began to fire, twisting left and right, pouring explosive rounds into the foe. He opened up with his hurricane bolters as well, the smaller shells proving no less destructive. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him. Victory or death. This was what being a Space Marine was all about.

  Lentulus shook his head at his young battle-brother’s actions and crouched down to avoid taking a bolt-round meant for a daemon. He picked his targets carefully, aiming at larger daemons, allowing the high-energy las-blasts to hit vital organs and vaporise heads. He looked around at the other two Space Marines. For all that he had derided them both, they were his brothers, and nothing could stand against the three of them together.

  The daemons were no exception. The bubble of seething Chaos that had been emerging from the keep was shrinking, falling back, and as it lessened, so too did the daemons lessen. They began to disappear, fizzling from existence like ice in the sun. When the rift vanished into the keep entirely, Lentulus turned his attention to the one in the sky. It was shrinking too. Smaller and smaller it became, until Lentulus could no longer see it with the naked eye. He looked around. The daemons were gone, or vanishing, their immaterial forms receding into nothingness as the energies keeping them in the real world dissipated. He ceased firing, cutting the power to his lascannons.

  His brothers put up their weapons as well.

  ‘Well,’ said Lentulus, relief flooding him, along with the joy of victory. ‘I think we won.’

  Aeroth passed warily through the corridors of the keep, alert for any sign of further threat. There came none, and with each step, he relaxed a little more. There was no sign of the corruption and twisting that the expansion of the rift had wrought upon the structure. All of the effects seemed to have been reversed. Almost all, anyway. Sentina was still gone.

  Reaching the aquila chamber, he saw a body on the floor. Stepping over, he looked down at it. It was the girl, Alia. Her chest had been torn apart.

  ‘She died saving your Chaplain’s life,’ came a voice from behind. He turned, grav-cannon arm raised, but it was only the old priest, Andronicus, standing in the doorway.

  ‘She sacrificed herself for him?’ Aeroth asked.

  ‘Indeed. And that simple act gave him the strength he needed to make a much larger sacrifice. Funny how something as simple as faith can change the fate of worlds, is it not?’

  ‘There is much in this universe that is “funny”, as you put it, old man. Death is rarely one of those things.’

  ‘It is also necessary, sergeant. We don’t want to go living forever, after all. Let’s leave that to Him on Terra.’

  ‘What will happen now?’ asked Aeroth.


  ‘The Administratum will send adepts to survey Orath and see if it’s worth reclaiming. If so, I expect the Ecclesiarchy will descend in force. Can’t let a world that nearly fell to Chaos be without a Ministorum presence any more, eh?’

  Aeroth didn’t reply.

  ‘I think it’s likely that life on Orath will go on, Sergeant Aeroth. Heh, Orath, Aeroth. Perhaps it was your destiny to be here. But I digress. Life will go on, but it will never be the same. And that’s good. Change is good. Time for a change for us all, I think.’

  The old man stretched his arms out with an audible crack.

  ‘It’s been quite a day, sergeant. I’m going to check on my flock and then go to bed. I shall see you again before you leave, I trust.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aeroth, looking around. ‘I think we’ll be here for a while.’

  Two hundred years ago

  It was a strange thing, to stand again in the spot where his soul had been torn asunder so many thousands of years before.

  Kharanath looked around. The chamber was much as he remembered it – small, irregular, with a wraithbone seal in the ground. The sight of it sent a twinge of pain through him as he thought of his loss.

  Well, today would see that rectified. It was time.

  He had never really forgotten Elthaenneath, though Khaine knew he had spent thousands of years trying.

  His brother’s sacrifice had saved Meldaen, but it had never been the same. Living there without his twin, feeling the void where once he had been, was impossible. And so he had left. He had considered the core worlds, but the increasing omens of doom had driven him away – luckily, considering what had happened just a few hundred years later – and into the depths of the webway. He was flotsam on the tides of fate, and like all things drifting in the great transit system that crisscrossed behind reality, he had ended up in the port of Commorragh.

  He didn’t really remember much of the next few thousand years, but he had ended up a slave, and fallen in with a rabble-rouser called Vect. Another good move, all things considered. When Vect had risen up to overthrow the noble houses and claim Commorragh as his own, Kharanath had stood with him, and a result he had ended up one of the lords of the Dark City, as secure as it was possible to be in that nest of vipers.