[Space Marine Battles 09] - Architect of Fate by Edited by Christian Dunn

Author:Edited by Christian Dunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-04-06T23:00:00+00:00

ENDEAVOUR OF WILL

PART ONE

Lochos was a beautiful city.

Steel spires burned silver in the sun of Olympia. Rivers of mercury ran through the streets, winding between the forges and the temples of that warrior-world’s oldest ancestors. Minarets and steeples competed to reach the sky. Mosaiced streets glittered and hearth-fires glowed deep red in the shadows between the foundries. From mountainside to seashore the city stretched, encompassing a thousand generations of Olympia’s past, and a million dreams of her future.

Statues of mighty armoured men of war stood atop every important building. The new gods of Lochos, the icons of a pious world, they were the emblematic of the new galaxy and the Great Crusade that was to unite it. They were exemplars of what humanity could one day become. They were the Iron Warriors.

This was the sight that beamed down on Shon’tu as he knelt upon the sacrificial stone. The warsmith had never knelt to any man, but he knelt now, because it was in deference to something more than a man. The vision of Lochos, the lost capital of Olympia, filled him with something that might have been emotion. He could not properly remember it, because it had been ten thousand years since he had last felt joy, or sadness, or anything so petty as that. Iron within, he had told himself then. Iron Without. Never again will there be anything in this soul but the iron of purpose and the steel of fury.

Perhaps it was regret he felt. It might have been longing that flickered across Shon’tu’s barely-human features, the few fleshy parts of his face almost crowded out by the steel jaw and the studded metal cranium. The man that later became Shon’tu had been born in Lochos. That man’s memory remained in Shon’tu. He remembered when he left it to join the Great Crusade of the wretch he would later know as the False Emperor, the Corpse-God. He remembered when he returned. He remembered when it fell.

Lochos was dead. Olympia was dead. But its spirit still lived.

‘I kneel,’ said Shon’tu.

‘Stand,’ replied the Spirit of Lochos.

Shon’tu stood up, armour clanking and whining, letting off jets of steam from its archaic motors. The Spirit of Lochos filled the whole ritual chamber, giving the impression that the chamber carried on for dozens of miles in every direction. In truth it was a small patch of holy ground set aside within the confines of the Ferrous Malice, consecrated with battlefield trophies offered up by the Iron Warriors. The ship was a relic of a previous age, pitted and scarred by the millennia, as gnarled and vicious as the Iron Warriors who rode in it. It was more than a machine or a weapon – it was cruel and self-aware like an animal trained to attack. Every piece of it was consecrated in battle, but the ritual chamber had been set aside solely for Shon’tu. The sacrificial stone was one pried from the streets of Lochos and bathed in the blood of its people long ago.

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