Blood and Fire (Space Marine Battles) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Blood and Fire (Space Marine Battles) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski-Bowden [Dembski-Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00


V

Death Sentence

‘Khattar.’ Ekene made a curse of the name.

‘Khattar,’ several of the others echoed. They were unhelmed, their dark faces bronzed by the flames. As rank and file troopers, they seemed reluctant to look at me for long. I caught them making occasional glances in my direction, at my tabard, heraldry, or the polished silver of my skull faceplate.

‘That was no war,’ one of them said.

‘Nothing but a slaughter,’ chimed another, from the other side of the fire. Their way of retelling tales seemed be almost ritualistic. Every voice was equal. Everyone’s story mattered.

Ekene was leading the storytelling gathering. ‘I was never present at meetings of Chapter command,’ he said. ‘But I was there. I was on Khattar.’

‘I was there,’ the others chorused, in their low voices.

Around us, Lions patrolled between the hulls of the few remaining tanks left to the Chapter. The vehicles were worn down by gunfire, with smoke taint darkening their cerulean paintwork. Ekene and his brothers could have been spirits themselves, drifting among the memories of their dead Chapter.

‘Khattar was a world of priests and preachers,’ he began. ‘Of followers and the faithful.’

‘An Ecclesiarchy world,’ I said. They did not regard it as interruption. Most of them nodded, and Ekene smiled.

‘As you say, Reclusiarch. A world in thrall to the ivory tower priests of the Imperial Creed.’

‘But it soured,’ one of the others added. From the scrollwork on his shoulderguard, the warrior’s name was Jehanu. He looked young, scarcely out of his Scout trials. Space Marines show their age in their scars.

‘Their faith rotted on the vine,’ Jehanu said. ‘And they called for us.’

‘The priesthood fell into deviancy,’ Ekene took over, ‘as so many do, in so many of our tales in this Final Age of Man. They prayed to the Gods behind the Veil, and their dark untruths carried the faithful masses away from the Emperor’s light, spreading to the highest echelons and furthest reaches.’

Jehanu interjected again. ‘You ask what could those priests have chanted to poison the souls of a whole world?’

Were the Lions mission briefings relayed in the same warrior-by-warrior retelling of facts? A curious custom.

‘Blasphemy,’ said another Lion with an amused snort. ‘Blasphemy and lies, compelling enough to sound like truth to a society weary of their prayers going unanswered.’

The Lions nodded. I wondered how true that was, across the galaxy. The Emperor was immortal and mighty beyond reckoning. But he was no god. Mankind – in its blessed ignorance – worshipped him as one.

Yet false gods cannot answer prayers. How tempting it must seem to those sects and societies far from Terra to seek other answers when pleading with the Emperor brings only silence.

‘Where were the world’s defenders, I hear you ask?’ Ekene showed his teeth in a feral shadow of a smile. ‘The planetary defence forces did not rise up to purge the revolt. They joined it. And more were still to come: Imperial Guard regiments in nearby systems did the same – such was the ferocity of Khattar’s blasphemy.’

‘Apollyon,’ Jehanu spoke up again.



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