Auric Gods

Chapter Eighteen The Lion’s Gate, Terra

Evil had taken on corporeality in the army of screaming Never­born awaiting the Custodians.

Meroved could hear them, despite the thickness of the gate in front of him.

Every one of the Ten Thousand waiting in the grand entrance hall could hear them. Whispers of damnation, curses and promises – all fell on deaf ears.

Four shield hosts stood together, a mustering not seen since the War of Shame, almost four thousand Custodians in full battle panoply. A gilded sea of Hykanatoi with spears, blades and shields looked to their general.

Blood-red light coursed through openings in the wall where gun emplacements had begun to engage, and it bathed Trajann Valoris in a murderous aura, as if he could appear any more belligerent.

He uttered no war cry, standing atop an ornate dais for all his warriors to see. Instead, he cast his gimlet gaze across the pristine banners, the war engines and the Revered Fallen, and as if satisfied with what he saw, he raised his guardian spear aloft. At his signal, the Lion’s Gate began to open. Mechanisms unused for millennia churned with metallic agony, shrieking loud enough to eclipse the hellspawn beyond for a short while.

As the shield host began a slow march, Meroved felt a hand upon his right shoulder. He turned to Syr Cartovandis.

‘We must annihilate them, shield-captain.’

Meroved nodded. ‘Aye, and we will.’

‘Terra must be rid of this filth.’

The gate’s aperture widened; more light and air fed in, thick with blood and brimstone. The wailing of the lost and damned became so loud it was difficult to hear.

In the end Meroved did not answer with words, but slammed his spear haft against his shield and saw it echoed amongst his gilded brothers as hundreds of struck shields stirred up a strident chorus. The daemons began to wail.

Let them suffer.

Favouring a glance to his left, Meroved saw Adio at his other shoulder, the banner clenched tightly in the Vexilus Praetor’s fist. The effigy of the Eagle Resplendent shone golden despite the bloody light.

Hold it high, brother, Meroved willed, the furore beyond the slowly opening gate almost overwhelming now.

Adio spared a glance to the only patch of darkness amongst the gold, the grim ranks of the Shadowkeepers, clad in black and summoned from the Dark Cells to stand and fight on Terra’s soil for the first time in millennia. The distraction was fleeting; Adio turned away as if he’d found what he sought and returned his attention to what lay ahead.

The slow march became a steady run, the tracked Land Raiders and hovering Vertus Praetors astride Dawneagles keeping pace. Contemptors amongst the throng, side by side with warriors in Allarus Terminator plate, sped up into a lumbering gait.

With every step, the light grew brighter and more visceral. A sense of moment fell upon Meroved, his storm shield thrust to the fore and his spear at shoulder height, poised to strike. The steady run became a sprint, the gate yawned wide unleashing the Emperor’s Legion in full fury. Hundreds of guardian spears drew level, ready for the initial thrust.

The Ten Thousand passed through the towering arch above the Lion’s Gate and into a cacophony.

Hellspawn in their multitudes surged against them like an unclean sea. The entire processional that led to the Lion’s Gate was choked with red-skinned daemons capering on reverse-jointed legs, with brutish flesh hounds swathed in brimstone scales and hulking mechanical beasts that bellowed metallically, spewing smoke and ash.

For Meroved, the conflict came in violent flashes, his vision shrinking to myopic focus but his awareness of the greater battle acute on account of his Emperor-given gifts.

Above, a flock of winged creatures duelled with golden gunships. Leathery bodies fell like burning rain. One of the craft exploded, violent and terrible, as it was overwhelmed. It took the harpies with it, and crashed beyond sight of the walls.

On one flank, Venerable Uriaxes wrestled a beast to the ground, hurling it onto its side before he tore open its chest and ripped out the foul organs within.

A sweeping run by a squadron of Kataphraktoi saw a pack of flesh hounds skewered on crackling lances, a salvo of flakburst missiles launched from jetbikes finishing the task.

These were but skirmishes, preludes to the greater struggle.

A massive host of red-skinned foot-soldiers dominated the processional and threw their bodies onto the spears of the Hykanatoi with reckless abandon.

Meroved saw dozens raised up, impaled and then decapitated by a sentinel blade a moment later. Hundreds leapt at the Custodians, cackling, only to land again in severed pieces. A shield wall formed, bearing the brunt of the daemons’ fearless charge. Limbs shattered. Skulls cracked. The Custodians pressed forwards into the mass, grinding bodies underfoot into slowly disintegrating ichor. A spear-tip of gold and black drove into the sea of red, parting it like the prow of an inexorable ship.

Having weathered the onslaught, Valoris led the counter-attack.

Meroved saw only glimpses, but he felt the shape and rhythm of the battle changing as the Custodians battled their way free of the gate and began to fight as they were always meant to, as individuals but acutely in synch.

The attack was devastating, a thresher of golden blades hacking apart the daemon-kin with deadly precision.

This was their war, the war against the one true enemy. It lent the Custodians fury, not the unshackled wrath of their crimson-fleshed counterparts but the pure, focused anger of a surgical laser cutting out the foe’s heart.

As the battle wore on, it expanded. Meroved found himself fighting alongside Cartovandis and Adio, each warrior complementing the other though acting entirely alone. It was a curiosity of the Custodians to fight in such a way; it had been thus since they were a Legio, before the adepts they had become. No other warrior of the Imperium could do the same – even the much vaunted and tragically flawed Adeptus Astartes needed the strength of the pack. The Ten Thousand felt no such dependency and yet they were in tune.

In a rare moment of respite, Meroved took stock.

Fires burned in the Terran night, reaching up in swirling conflagrations to touch the sky and set it aflame. Ash choked the air, thick with blood and black dust. Everything burned. A diabolic lens had imposed itself over the Throneworld and here at the Lion’s Gate that reality would fade or be made permanent.

Meroved would die before letting that come to pass, and his brotherhood was not alone in that conviction. Silver-armoured Grey Knights fought beside the Ten Thousand, daemon-killers by trade if not by right, and the Neverborn army faltered. The defenders of Terra pressed their advantage, slaughtering without restraint, constantly moving to the next battle, to the next enemy.

Terra must be rid of this filth.

Meroved intended to see that come to pass.

A hefty gouge had been carved in the ranks of the bloodletters, which bayed and fought and snarled at their gradual but certain dissolution.

Meroved had barely been struck, and his armour had weathered with ease what few blows had breached his defence. Cartovandis and Adio were similarly unscathed, advancing alongside him out of instinct. As they were pressing forwards, a horn sounded, a deep discordant note that echoed across the entire processional.

Adio paused, looking to his shield-captain. The din that had initially assailed them had lessened since the battle had worn on and it was possible to speak and be heard again as the horn’s reverberations faded.

‘Hold here…’ Meroved warned. The air changed, thickening with humidity. His voice and all ambient noise became muted.

Cartovandis hacked apart the last of the bloodletters they had been fighting and looked up, his blade and the mask of his armour flecked with sizzling ichor.

‘I feel the approach of something, brothers,’ he said, his gaze drawn skywards to the boiling red and black.

Nearby Grey Knights struck up a chant, joining in a psychic mantra as they took on a pearlescent aura. The Paladin who led them unclasped a book from his vestments and began to read in an ancient tongue, his words sharp and acerbic.

A warrior clad in the armature of a Nemesis Dreadknight stepped over the steaming corpse of a hell beast, his eyes on the churning sky. Locked in the arcane exo-frame, the pilot towered above both the other Grey Knights and the Custodians. Pistons growled in the Dreadknight’s legs and the rotator cannon on its left arm cycled in fresh daemon-killing rounds. The pilot raised the sword in the Dreadknight’s right arm to the dark heavens and spat out a curse. ‘Kharneth exilium!’

And the dark heavens answered.

On black and smoking wings, a beast plunged out of darkness and fire.

The flagstones of the processional shattered beneath its hooved tread as it sat hunched, exuding palpable menace, its wings furled around it like some leathery cocoon. As it rose from a crouching stance, a brutish head crowned by two horns and sat upon a brawny neck slowly acknowledged those who challenged it.

A bellow ripped from its canine snout, wings thrust to the extent of their massive span and a whip uncoiled from around its wrist, as thick as the haft of a guardian spear blade. A breastplate of blackened iron wrapped its torso, still steaming as if fresh forged on some black anvil. Tufts of stiff crimson fur jutted from beneath the metal.

It had many names – Eater of Gore and Flesh, Lord of Skulls, High-handed Slayer; each honorific was as gruesome and forbidding as the last.

But the Ten Thousand knew it by a different appellation.

Cartovandis’ lip curled. ‘Bloodthirster.’

The Dreadknight rushed to meet it, but with a savage beat of its wings the Bloodthirster smashed into the war engine and bore it down. Hunching over its stricken form, the daemon tore the pilot from his exo-frame. With the sound of hard rain splashing against metal, silver turned to red as the Bloodthirster bit deep, hurling the sparking exo-frame into the other Grey Knights, scattering them as it gorged on their dead comrade’s corpse.

Snorting, a half-chewed, silver arm still hanging from its mouth, the Bloodthirster unhitched a black-bladed axe from its back and turned towards the Custodians.

Meroved felt the weight of its hatred and raised his spear.

He charged, Cartovandis and Adio on his heels.

It was like running headlong into a furnace, the air choked with ash and shimmering with heat.

The whip snapped at him, almost sentient, but Meroved eluded it and found a gap in the Bloodthirster’s breastplate. It roared, half in pain, half in fury, spitting up partially dissolved bones and pieces of armour. Spattered in acid-eaten gore, Meroved thrust his spear deeper in the hope of reaching something vital.

A desultory swipe of the Bloodthirster’s wing sent him sprawling, his guardian spear still embedded in its form. His shield clanged loudly, lost somewhere beyond his sight. Caroming over the broken processional like a stone skipping over water, Meroved reached out and grabbed a jutting rock to arrest his violent tumble.

Adio had closed on the daemon, castellan axe swinging for its arm. He jerked, suddenly pulled to the side as the whip snared him, and he came up short. Dark leather tightened around his waist as Adio was wrenched off his feet and hurled into the air. He flailed into the distance, crashing down as he was lost to the sprawl of the battle.

Meroved was back on his feet. He stooped, retrieving his shield at a run, as Cartovandis turned an axe blow on his shield and stabbed hard into the Bloodthirster’s hide before falling back. Meroved made the most of the distraction to get close enough to yank out his spear.

The whip arced around, the barbs along its length cutting air but forcing both Custodians back.

A rope of thick, phlegmy blood jetted from the Bloodthirster’s flared nostrils as it snorted its contempt. It bled from dozens of minor wounds, leaking sizzling ichor like oil. Its massive shoulders heaved with its heavy exhalations. It even breathed angrily.

Meroved heard Cartovandis murmuring.

‘Emperor… I am Your blade. Guide my hand, oh Master of Mankind…’

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the Grey Knights stirring…

‘Bestow unto me Your will and see it enacted.’

Bloodied, crawling on his hands and knees, the Paladin reached for the book that had spilled from his grasp. His fingers trembled…

‘Forsake me not, oh Emperor… For I am Your willing servant…’

The Bloodthirster roared, a prelude to violence. It hacked at Cartovandis, a flurry of life-ending blows, but exposed its flank as the Custodian withdrew. Meroved lunged, but the Bloodthirster turned and his guardian spear only raked the black iron breastplate, spitting sparks as it skidded off hell-forged metal. The axe’s backswing took him by surprise, a glancing hit that sheared Meroved’s hastily proffered shield in half and punched him off his feet. He spun, pain coursing through his chest and arm. Bones broke, auramite cracked and he blacked out before he hit the ground.

He came around a few seconds later, groaning in pain as he heaved himself onto his hands and knees. Seizing the haft of his spear, he eviscerated a bloodletter seeking to take advantage, before lurching to one knee and beheading two more as he swept his weapon in a wide arc. The daemons’ headless bodies had yet to fall as Meroved’s eyes alighted on his brothers.

Cartovandis fought alone. He had lost his shield and wielded a sentinel blade two-handed, turning and cutting and stabbing. Adio was some distance away. He had lost his weapon and wrestled a massive flesh hound with his gauntleted hands. A clutch of Shadowkeepers had seen his plight but had been waylaid by bloodletters and fought to make a path.

Meroved could only reach one and he chose Cartovandis. His fellow Custodian was a consummate swordsman, but a Bloodthirster was a lord of battle incarnate. Alone, he would not survive.

Spitting out a gobbet of blood, Meroved staggered uncertainly to his feet.

Wounds gaped in the Bloodthirster’s flesh and its breastplate had a ragged crack across it, but the daemon had lost none of its fury. After each thrust or cut, Cartovandis faced a frenzied counter-attack. Every blow he parried raked a cascade of black sparks from the edge of his sword, his body trembling with the impacts, and he moved with desperate haste.

Seeing an opening, Cartovandis hacked down onto the Bloodthirster’s wrist. The hand clutching the whip separated from the arm, but the spurting wound splattered Cartovandis in boiling, viscous ichor. He gagged as his armour was bathed in the filth then staggered, barely turning the next blow. A second attack opened up his defence, putting him on the back foot as his sword spun wide, and he only just held on to it with one hand. The axe swept down, blistering the air… A spear embedded in the Bloodthirster’s hand pushed the blow wide. The axe sheared into the ground instead, missing Cartovandis by a hair’s breadth. He had yet to fully recover when the Bloodthirster thrust with its snout and gored Cartovandis on its horns, razor-sharp bone tearing through auramite and splitting it apart. He cried out, the agony catching in his throat as he hacked off the horn. The daemon roared and smashed Cartovandis aside, having raked his body from shoulder to groin.

He fell, his sword slipping from loose fingers, and did not rise again.

Meroved only had his knife but drew it anyway as the daemon bore down on Cartovandis’ prone form. A rare battle cry escaped his lips, intended to draw the daemon to him and purchase a few vital seconds. He was only moments away from death when he heard chanting.

‘Khak’akaoz’…’

The Bloodthirster faltered as if struck. It visibly shrank, the skin flaking off its body like ash.

The chanting came from the Paladin. He leaned against the bodies of his fellow Grey Knights, the book of true names he was reading from aglow with psychic potency.

‘…khyshk,akami…’

Every syllable brought the daemon fresh pain. It sank to one knee as its indomitable will began to fail. A guardian spear pierced its side. It howled, flailing ineffectually as another blade found its mark. And then another. A host of Custodians jabbed at the Bloodthirster from every quarter, thrusting and stabbing with spear and sword as the Paladin’s chanting grew fiercer and more determined.

‘Khak’akaoz’…’

The daemon fought on but diminished with the Paladin’s every utterance.

‘…khyshk,akami…’

Its limbs already withering, the daemon’s stiff fur grew grey and piebald. Its wings sagged, torn ragged and moth-eaten.

Satisfied, Meroved left the daemon to its fate and made for Cartovandis.

He was dying, ripped open with his entrails spewed like so much offal.

A horn sounded, this time a clarion he knew. The Shadowkeepers had signalled a retreat in the face of the daemonic onslaught, their dark-hulled gunships strafing the enemy but descending to extract them from the field.

Meroved spared a glance for Adio, the flesh hound’s jaws clamped around his wrist and more of the Neverborn bearing down on him.

‘Hold on, brother…’ he murmured, but knew he had to deal with Cartovandis first. Meroved pushed his guts back into his body and told him to hold them there as he grabbed hold of the stricken Custodian’s gorget and began to drag him towards Adio. Pain burned white-hot as his own wounds tore open and widened, but Meroved kept going.

Adio had snapped the flesh hound’s neck. He had also drawn his misericordia and used it to cut apart the bloodletters that had flocked like carrion birds eager for his skin. The banner lay broken at his feet but he was unbowed as he regarded the departing gunships. He found his castellan axe and cut down another swathe of daemons before the three Custodians were reunited.

Meroved limped with every step, and Adio quickly took the burden he carried in his stead.

‘It’s a miracle he’s alive.’

‘How much longer he stays that way depends on whether we can get him to a chirurgeon,’ Meroved replied.

In the distance, the Grey Knights and Custodians were finishing off the Bloodthirster. Almost nothing remained, just a shrunken and flaking husk until even that was gone, broken apart and turned into smoke on the wind.

‘I thought you were dead…’ admitted Meroved, wincing as he clutched his side.

Adio looked skywards. His fist clenched.

‘And yet still you came.’

‘They must have had good reason…’

Adio lingered on the gunships until they had turned into little more than specks on the blood-red horizon, but said nothing.