The Beast Arises

Bezhrak gave him a long look, then nodded. ‘So die,’ he said. He brought the staff down again with a slam of judgement. He stood still and quiet, the fearsome focus of the Great Chamber.

Vangorich stared at the beast who had come to the heart of the Imperium and been repelled by the animals there. An ork had become the figure of dignity and, worse still, of majesty in humanity’s parliament. With all honour dead, how was it possible that the ground did not open up and swallow the Palace?

To Narkissos, Bezhrak said, ‘Done here.’

With Narkissos trailing them, the orks turned their backs on the High Lords of Terra. In their wake, the new silence continued. It was deep and painful as a terminal wound, but it didn’t last. Words like blood poured from it, as the Lords turned on each other again.

We deserve it, Vangorich thought. The enormous, lethal, infinite foolishness of the human race shook the chamber and fell on his soul with the weight of a collapsing civilisation. We deserve it, he thought again.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring at nothing, deafened by hopelessness. But he shook off the despair. He cast it away with a refrain. I will fight, he thought. I will fight.

I will fight.

He looked up. The orks were gone. So was the point of the Senatorum. There was nothing he could do here. There was nothing anyone could do here.

He wondered where Veritus had gone.

He had taken ten steps away from the dais when the explosion hit. It came from below. The floor of the Great Chamber shook and cracked. Tiers collapsed. The Imperium’s futile dignitaries tumbled over each other in a human cascade. Tocsins competed with panicked screams. Vangorich ran towards the exit of the Great Chamber, where he saw Mercado yelling into a vox-handset. The captain looked up as Vangorich drew near. He lowered the vox-set. He was handling it as if it had bitten him.

‘Is it the orks?’ he asked. Had they somehow inserted a bomb beneath the Palace? Had he given them the opportunity to do so?

‘No, Grand Master,’ Mercado said. His voice was disbelieving. ‘It’s the eldar.’

Guy Haley

Throneworld

One

The Last Wall gathers

An armada of slab-sided warships glided in geosynchronous orbit a thousand kilometres over Phall’s equator, diverse heraldries proclaiming their masters. Bleached by harsh sunlight unfiltered by atmosphere, the yellow and silver, black, blue, crimson, white and grey of each Space Marine Chapter was nevertheless clear, defiant of the star’s glare. Void-deep shadow cut mysterious shapes onto the towering superstructures high on the ships’ spines. A million lights shone from their flanks. The craft were larger than cities; thousands dwelled within them, living out lives devoted to war. Great gun maws issued silent challenges to the fathomless interplanetary night. Hangar bays were black slots glimmering with coherence fields, ready to launch the vengeance of the Emperor at the foes of the Imperium.

Still Koorland feared it would not be enough. He counted and recounted the ships, calculating the combined strength of arms arrayed above the world. Ship tonnage, munition payloads, fighter groups, armed bondsmen, serfs and ship crews, all of it, not only the number of Adeptus Astartes, although they were the group he counted and recounted the most. Each time the mathematics of war came up short. The greatest number of Space Marines gathered in one place since the time of the Scouring, and still it was pitiful in the face of the orkish threat.

‘Truly, it is a sight to stir the hearts of men.’

‘It is, Brother Issachar,’ said Koorland. He moved away from the window to greet the Chapter Master of the Excoriators as he entered the observation deck. The mark of their shared heritage was clear to see — the fist that adorned Issachar’s dull white pauldron was the same as that upon Koorland’s yellow armour — but it was a kinship sundered. The ways of the sons of Dorn had diverged. Issachar’s fist was red, not black, and gripped in its fingers a doubled lightning bolt of yellow that Koorland’s lacked. The Excoriator’s armour was a mess of nicks and scratches, each one annotated in fastidious script detailing the manner and date of its earning. His exposed face was likewise abused, those stretches of skin not torn up by battle wounds ritually scarred.

Koorland’s own armour was battered, and he would not repaint it until his vengeance was won, but whereas his oath was exceptional, born out of grief, the practice of the Excoriators to preserve all hurts done to them was strange to him, as were the rituals of the others in the fleet: the Black Templars, the Crimson Fists, and the Fists Exemplar. Brotherhood brought them here to the gathering of the Last Wall — the successors of the old VII Legion amassed again as Terra was threatened. Despite their commonalities, fifteen hundred years had passed since the VII Legion had ceased to be, and these Chapters fathered by the same primarch had drifted far apart.