Helsreach Read online

  She had wept in that moment, and soon after, they shared a small meal in the ruins of her hab-chamber. He asked questions of her life, and the losses she’d suffered. Before he left an hour later, he made sure she had several days’ worth of food and fluid, and blessed her in the name of the God-Emperor. It was strange to be ministering to the genuinely needy, and the fully-fleshed. So many of his sermons had been to fellow clerics and machine-altered skitarii that a weeping woman praising the Emperor was quite beyond his experience.

  It was strange, but it was good. It was worthy.

  Asavan Tortellius’s first meeting with a survivor had gone well. He walked on, similar encounters repeating themselves over the next day and night. It was only on the third day that he ran into trouble.

  A small group of ragged survivors huddled around a trash-fire, warming their hands as night fell over another tank graveyard along the Hel’s Highway. Asavan cleared his throat as he approached, raising a hand in greeting.

  The survivors whirled, bringing lasguns to bear. Several of the group were in workers’ overalls, blood-spattered and dark with grime. One of them was clad in a Guard uniform, a bulky power pack on his back and a cabled lasrifle aimed at Asavan’s face.

  ‘No more surprises, please, yes?’ The soldier spat onto the ground, his thin face marked with suspicion. ‘I am tired and I am cold and I am sick to my core of shooting looters in the skull.’

  ‘I’m not a looter.’

  ‘That is not a surprise to me, given what I have just said I do to looters.’

  ‘I’m a priest.’

  ‘Explains the robes,’ one of the workers chuckled. ‘I think he’s telling the truth, Andrej.’

  ‘A priest,’ the storm-trooper repeated.

  ‘A priest,’ Asavan nodded.

  The storm-trooper lowered his rifle. ‘That is most definitely a surprise. I am Andrej of the Legion. These are my friends, who were unlucky enough to be born in Helsreach instead of a city worth defending.’

  The workers snickered.

  ‘I am Asavan Tortellius, of Stormherald.’

  ‘The god-machine?’ Andrej barked a laugh. ‘You are far from your walking throne, fat priest. Did you fall off and fail to catch up?’

  Asavan drew nearer to the fire, and the workers made room for him.

  ‘Tomaz Maghernus.’ One of them offered his hand for the priest to shake. ‘Don’t mind Andrej, sir. He’s not all there.’

  ‘All of me is exactly where it needs to be.’ The storm-trooper shook his head, his dark, weasel eyes glinting with the fire’s reflection. ‘Throne, I have never been so cold. We are all lucky that our balls have not frozen and cracked by now.’

  ‘Good to see you,’ one of the other men muttered to the priest.

  ‘Yeah,’ another nodded, his voice sincere despite not meeting the newcomer’s eyes. Asavan was touched by their almost-shy gratitude to see a priest amongst all this.

  ‘Looters?’ Asavan asked. ‘Did I hear that correctly?’

  ‘You did,’ Maghernus breathed into his hands, before holding them out to the flames. ‘Dockworkers. Militia and Guard deserters. It’s ugly out here. They’re going through the habs, stealing credits and whatever else they can find.’

  ‘May I ask, why are you out here?’

  Andrej shook his head as he joined the group. ‘Do not sound so suspicious, holy man. We are not hiding from duty. We are merely the Forgotten, lost in the dead city, making our way back to… wherever the closest front line might be.’

  ‘You have no contact with the rest of the Guard?’

  ‘Ha! I like this. I like the way you think. You fell off your Titan, fat man. Do you have a vox-link back to ask your Mechanicus masters for advice? No. Exactly. You were not at the docks, priest. Half the city died last week. The Guard is broken, and the vox is no more than a hundred frequencies of hissing noise. If I am right, and I hope to be wrong, then no Imperial force is able to contact any other in perhaps half of the city.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘We are moving west. The Templars went to the west, and so shall we. Why are you here?’

  Asavan shrugged. It wasn’t something he could explain with any conviction. ‘I wanted to walk the streets and help where I could. I was serving no one on the back of a Titan.’

  A few of the group made the sign of the aquila and murmured their admiration.

  ‘You wish to come with us, fat priest? You will like what is in the west, I am thinking.’

  ‘What’s in the west?’ Asavan asked.

  ‘A great number of burning industrial sectors, too many looters for my innocent heart to consider at this moment in time, and of course, the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.’

  ‘What is this temple you speak of? A monastery? A cathedral?’

  Maghernus shook his head. ‘Both. Neither. It’s a shrine – built by the original colonists who came to Armageddon.’

  In his surprise, Asavan almost ordered a servo-skull to take a dictation. ‘You are telling me that the first church ever built in Helsreach still stands? It endured the First War against the daemon armies? It remained unbroken through the Second War, when the Great Enemy first came to this world?’

  ‘Well… yeah,’ Maghernus replied.

  This was providence. This was why he had left the Titan, and this was why the God-Emperor had guided him through the city to these men.

  Andrej snorted at his questions. ‘It is not simply the first church built in Helsreach, my fat friend. It is the first church ever raised in the whole world. When the first settlers prayed to the Emperor, they prayed in the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.’

  Asavan felt his hands trembling. ‘How do we reach it?’

  Andrej gestured to the expansive, raised road in the distance. ‘We walk the Hel’s Highway. How else?’

  Artarion stood away from the others.

  The building they occupied had once been a small temple, serving as the spiritual heart of this industrial sector. Now it was a tumbledown ruin, no longer fit to house dawn and dusk prayers for the local workers. In the altar room, Artarion had paused his bored exploration, finding bloodstains on some of the fallen rubble that had buried the floor in broken architecture.

  The blood-scent was old, the stains themselves flaking. Whoever was entombed beneath had been dead for days. Artarion breathed in through his helm’s filters. Female. Had not bled much after being crushed. Dead for perhaps three days; the delicate scent of decomposition was little more than spice on the air.

  He’d removed himself to perform the rites of maintenance on his weapons, as well as to get away from Priamus muttering about the Salamanders.

  As he lowered himself to sit on the dead woman’s cairn, the knee joint of his armour locked for several seconds. Runic warnings flickered across his visor display. Instead of blanking them, he disengaged his helm’s seals, removed it, and breathed in the smell of the fire, ash and brick dust that was all Helsreach had become. The faulty joint crunched back into motion, eliciting a grunt from the knight as he sat.

  His bolter, chained to his thigh and mag-locked in place, was starved of ammunition. He had not spoken of this to the others yet, but knew they must surely be approaching similar difficulties. Before the week of bloodshed at the docks, the supplies brought down by the Helsreach Crusade from the Eternal Crusader so long ago had been reduced to a Thunderhawk cargo bay half-full of bolts and an almost-empty crate of replacement tooth-tracks for chainswords.

  The gunship itself sat cold and silent in the courtyard of a factory complex, almost two kilometres to the west, in a sector of the city still securely in Imperial control.

  Artarion examined the bolter’s fire-blackened muzzle, turning the weapon over in his hands as he followed the path of winding, once-gold inlaid scriptures etched along the gun’s sides. A list of enemies slain, battles won, worlds defended…

  In wordless silence, he lowered the bolter again.

  ‘There is nothing to like in t
hem,’ Priamus spat as he paced the prayer room. ‘They wage war to defend, to preserve. Everything in their way is devoted to maintaining what humanity already has.’

  Bastilan was sharpening his combat blade, running a whetstone along the gladius’s killing edges. The small chamber was filled with Priamus’s crunching bootsteps and the resssh, resssh of the whetstone scraping.

  ‘It is flawed,’ the swordsman added. ‘I mean no offence to them as warriors. But drop-podding into the city purely to defend civilians? Madness.’

  Resssh, resssh.

  ‘Why do you not answer, brother?’

  ‘I have little to say.’ Resssh, resssh.

  ‘Do you think ill of me for my beliefs? Bastilan, please, you know I am right.’

  ‘I know you are treading on unstable ground. Do not besmirch the honour of our brother Chapter. The Salamanders shed as much blood as we did this week.’

  ‘That is not the point.’

  Resssh, resssh. ‘That is where you and I disagree, brother. But you are young. You will learn.’

  Priamus didn’t bother to hide his disgusted sneer from infecting his voice. ‘Do not patronise me, old man. You know of what I speak. You are just quietened by the mounting years and too reserved to say it aloud.’

  ‘I am not that old,’ Bastilan laughed. The boy was annoying, but he certainly knew how to drag out a smile or two with his misguided fervour.

  ‘Do not laugh at me.’

  ‘Then stop making me laugh. What two Chapters fight the same? What two Chapters wage war according to the same principles? We are all born of different worlds and trained by different masters. Accept the differences and stand with them as allies.’

  ‘But they are wrong.’ Priamus stared at the older warrior in disbelief. How could he be so obtuse? ‘They could have landed anywhere in the city. They could have struck at one of the alien commanders. Instead, they crash down amongst us at the docks to defend the humans.’

  ‘That is why they came. Do not mistake their compassion for tactical idiocy.’

  ‘That is my point.’ Priamus resisted the rising urge to draw his blade. There was nothing to cut beyond the air before him, yet he felt a keen need to draw steel. ‘They preserve. They defend. We are Astartes, not Imperial Guard. We are the spear thrust to the throat, not the blunt anvil. We are all that remains of the Great Crusade, Bastilan. For ten thousand years, we and we alone have crusaded to bring the Emperor’s worlds into compliance. We do not fight for the people of the Imperium, we fight for the Imperium itself. We attack. We attack.’

  Resssh, ressh. ‘Not here. Not at Helsreach.’

  Priamus lowered his head, unwilling to concede the point, despite the fact he knew he was defeated. That bastard Bastilan always did this to him. A few quiet words and he’d puncture all of what Priamus was trying to say. It was far, far beyond annoying.

  ‘Helsreach is…’ the swordsman’s voice was lower now – less bitter, and somehow less confident. ‘Nothing about this war has felt right.’

  Nerovar had also retreated from the others.

  But apparently not far enough.

  ‘Brother,’ came a voice. Grimaldus had returned. Nero acknowledged him with a nod, and returned to his feigned examination of the blistered and burned mural on the temple wall. Scenes of the Emperor watching over Helsreach: a golden god with His radiant visage regarding scenes of great industry below. With the wall ruined by flame and the artwork charred, it now resembled the city outside more than it ever had.

  ‘How was the command meeting?’

  ‘A tedious discussion of last stands. In that respect, it was no different from any other time. The Salamanders have withdrawn.’

  ‘Then perhaps Priamus will cease his complaints.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  Grimaldus removed his helm. Nerovar watched him as he examined the paintings, seeing the Reclusiarch’s scarred features set in a thoughtful frown.

  ‘How is the wound?’ Grimaldus asked, his voice both deeper and softer now, unfiltered by helm vox.

  ‘I will live.’

  ‘Pain?’

  ‘Does it matter? I will live.’

  The chains binding his weapons to his armour rattled as the Reclusiarch moved across the chamber. Ceramite armour boots thudded on the dusty mosaics, breaking them underfoot. In the centre of the room, Grimaldus looked up at the holed ceiling, where a stained glass dome had once mercifully blocked the view of the polluted sky.

  ‘I was with Cador,’ he said, staring up into the heavens. ‘I was with him at the end.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So you will believe me when I say that you could have done nothing for him had you been at our side? He was dead the moment the beast struck him.’

  ‘I saw the death wound, did I not? You are telling me nothing I do not already know.’

  ‘Then why do you still mourn his fall? It was a magnificent death, worthy of a vault on board the Crusader. He killed nine of the enemy with a broken blade and his bare hands, Nero. Dorn’s blood, if only we could all inscribe such deeds on our armour. Humanity would have cleansed the stars by now.’

  ‘He will never rest in that vault, and you know it.’

  ‘That is not worth mourning over. It is just a regrettable truth. Hundreds of our own heroes have fallen and remained unrecovered. You carry Cador’s true legacy. Why is that not enough? I wish to help you, brother, but you are not making it easy.’

  ‘He trained me. He taught me the blade and bolter. He was a father in place of the parents I was stolen from.’

  Grimaldus had still not looked at the other knight. He watched as an Imperial fighter streaked overhead, and wondered if it was Helius, the heir to Barasath and Jenzen.

  ‘It is the way of the warrior,’ he said, ‘to outlive the ones that train us. We take their lessons and wield them as weapons against the enemies of Man.’

  Nero snorted.

  ‘Did I say something amusing, Apothecary?’

  ‘In a way. Hypocrisy is always amusing.’ The Apothecary removed his own helm. As he did so, he could suddenly feel the unwelcome weight of the cryo-sealed gene-seed in his forearm storage pod.

  ‘Hypocrisy?’ Grimaldus asked, more curious than annoyed.

  ‘It is not like you to comfort and console, Reclusiarch. Forgive me for saying so.’

  ‘Why would I need to forgive you for speaking the truth?’

  ‘You make it sound so clear and easy. None of us have been truthful with you since… we came here.’

  Grimaldus lowered his gaze from the dark skies. He fixed his eyes – eyes that the commander of a god-machine had called kind, of all things – on Nerovar’s own.

  ‘You say “Since we came here”. I sense another lie.’

  ‘Very well. Since before we came here. Since Mordred died. It is difficult to be near you, Reclusiarch. You are withdrawn when you should be inspiring. You are distant when you would once have been wrathful. I believe you are wrong to lecture me on Cador’s death when you have been lost to us since Mordred fell. There are flashes of fire beneath the cold surface, and we have warned you of these changes before. But to no avail.’

  Grimaldus chuckled, the sound leaving his lips as a soft exhalation through a reluctant smile.

  ‘I am seeing the world through his eyes,’ he said, looking down at the silver skull mask in his hands. ‘And I am seeing, night after night, that I am not him. I did not deserve this honour. I am no leader of men, nor am I skilled at dealing with the humans. I should not be wearing the mantle of a Reclusiarch, yet I was certain once the war began, my doubts and discomforts would fade away.’

  ‘But they have not.’

  ‘No. They have not. I will die on this world.’ Grimaldus looked at the Apothecary again. ‘My master died, and mere days later, I was consigned to die on a world that has no hope of surviving an ugly war, far from my brothers and the Chapter I have served for two centuries. Even if we win, what does victory buy? We will be kings astride a ruine
d world of dead industry.’ He shook his head. ‘And this is where we will die. A worthless death.’

  ‘It is glorious, in its own way. The Helsreach Crusade. Our brothers and the people of this world will remember our sacrifice forever. You know this as well as I.’

  ‘Oh, I know it. I cannot escape it. But I do not care for glory. Glory is earned through a life lived in service to the Throne. It should not be a consolation gift, or something sought to sate a hunger. I want my life to matter to my brothers, and I want my death to further the cause of the Imperium. Do you not recall Mordred’s last words to me? They are written in gold upon the plinth of the statue that honours him.’

  ‘I remember them, Reclusiarch. “We are judged in life for the evil we destroy”. And we will be judged well, for a great many have fallen before us already.’

  ‘Our deaths inspire no one. They benefit no one. Do you recall the Shadow Wolves? When we saw the last of that Chapter die, I felt my heart sing. Never before had I craved the taste of alien blood as I did in that moment. Their deaths mattered. Every warrior clad in silver armour died in true glory that day. What of Helsreach? Who will draw courage from a footnote in the archives of a fallen city?’

  Grimaldus closed his eyes. He did not open them again, even as he heard Nerovar approaching. The fist crashing against his jaw knocked him to the ground, where he at last looked back at the Apothecary. Grimaldus was smiling, though in truth he had not expected the blow.

  ‘How dare you?’ Nero asked, his teeth clenched and his fist still tight. ‘How dare you? You throw filth on our glory here, yet you dare tell me Cador’s death means something? It means nothing. He died as we will all die: unremembered and unburied. You are my Reclusiarch, Grimaldus. Do not lie to me. If our glory matters to no one, then Cador’s death is meaningless and I have every right to mourn him as you mourn for all of us.’

  The Chaplain licked his lips, tasting the chemical-rich blood that marked them. In silence, he rose to his feet. Nerovar did not back away. Far from it, he stood his ground, and activated his bracer-mounted storage pod. A plastek vial slid from its secure housing, and Nerovar threw it to Grimaldus.

  The Reclusiarch caught it in hands that threatened to shake. NACLIDES, the script on the vial denoted. The gene-seed of a brother fallen days before.