The Fury

James Swallow

The power sword falls in a screaming arc, more a thing alive with its own anger than a weapon controlled by his hands. He sees it descend, the fractions of seconds extended by the chem-stimulated processing of his genhanced brain. He sees it at point of impact, the molecule-fine edge slicing though the armour plate of the traitor cultist’s wargear. The momentary flash of sparks as metal is torn apart. The blade sinks into flesh, easy and quick, cutting and burning. Meat-smell. Seared flesh, heavy in his nostrils, triggering scent-memory of a grox butchered for sustenance months ago. The enemy makes a sound that is not a scream, not truly. It is more a moan, a cry of futility. There is understanding in it, now at the end. The cultist knows he is finished.

The blood gushes like wine from a cracked urn, a stream becoming a spray, a jetting, throbbing pulse that pools at the murdered man’s feet. He comes apart, shoulder and arm and half his chest cleaved away, the bone-crack sound as it breaks off.

The traitor dies and the warrior moves on, crushing his opponent’s skull with one great boot of crimson ceramite as he passes. The act is not deliberate, not planned. It is simply that the Blood Angel has finished his task with this particular foe, and there are so many more yet to be killed. A numberless horde, foul of tongue and screaming their black hymns to Chaos. The Blood Angel and his kinsmen will murder them all before the day is done, and soak the earth of this inconsequential world with the spoil.

He is firing the bolt pistol. It bucks in his armoured gauntlet like a living thing, eager as if it could leap from his fingers if so allowed. Echoing crashes of shot blast thunder-calls cross the reeking battleground, and with each expended round a death follows closely. Skulls explode into pink haze. Limbs are turned to red slurry. No moment of kill-power is wasted. It is how he was trained; it is how his primogenitor fought. Fury, marshalled and controlled like lightning in a bottle. The power of rage, harnessed. A darkest of potentials hidden beneath a mask

And yet, the mask may slip. At his side, a brother fights with greater and greater abandon. His knows this man: Celcinan, of the Third. He is far from his unit, perhaps propelled by the fog of war and the crush of battle. But Brother Celcinan does not seem to pay it any mind. He watches Celcinan fighting as he reloads the pistol.

Celcinan has removed his helmet, but not for any good reason that can be intuited. The warrior’s face is drenched in crimson, the back-spray of hearts burst open to the air. His armoured fists end in steel claws, barbed talons that can tear the hulls of tanks. They are smoking with newly spilled blood, hot vapour steaming off them into the cold air. Celcinan is in a fury, and it comes from the Blood Angel like radiation.

He feels it like the aura of an inferno, lapping against him. Rage, black as space. Thirst, red as blood. Celcinan is deep, swimming in it, awash in it. His battle-brother’s anger is something quite magnificent to behold.

Until Celcinan is killed. A brilliant rod of purple light bursts from within the cultist lines as a heavy lascannon discharges at near range. He flinches away, nictating membranes flicking closed over his eyes to protect him from the dazzle-flash. When he blinks back to full sight a tenth of a second later, Celcinan is quite dead.

A charred hole large enough to fit a fist through has cored Brother Celcinan’s torso, penetrating armour, flesh and bone. He topples like a felled tree and sinks into the squelching, blood-thick mud. Celcinan’s last act is to look at him, and something unseen crosses the gap between the two Blood Angels.

That ghostly thing is anger.

The moderated wrath of the warrior suddenly ebbs away and he feels himself fill with a kind of rage that only titans can know. His battle-brother is lost, and now all he wants is to take back the blood cost of Celcinan’s murder. It is a death undeserved, for every warrior of the Adeptus Astartes is worth a thousand of these screaming, mewling whorechild zealots. He wants to take the payment now.

The Blood Angel forgets his bolter; this is a deed to be done close at hand, eye to eye. Those who perish must go to their warped gods knowing who killed them and why.

Bellowing his primarch’s name, the son of Sanguinius hurls himself into the enemy line, his sword becoming a bright and shining blur. Death follows close. The killer with the lascannon is unmanned by the thunder of the Blood Angel’s battle-roar, and not even the hypno-imprints of the dark acolytes that turned him can blot out the sound of such anger and such revenge.

The warrior’s sword goes through the cultist’s sternum and explodes from his spine in a welter of crimson fluid. They draw closer, into a murderous embrace, and by freak chance the traitor still lives. The warrior acts without thought, and with his free hand he rips open the cultist’s throat.

Blood.

Blood erupts in a steaming fountain from his enemy’s ruined flesh, spattering across his faceplate and staining his vision red. It clogs the breather grille, the hot coppery perfume saturates the inside of his helm. His mouth instantly floods with saliva, and he wants nothing more than to tear off his armoured helmet and drink deep of the spill. He savours the desire for that rich taste, and the wine-dark flow of the vitae across his tongue and down his throat.

He feels the mask slipping off his face. The perfect, patrician mask of nobility and humble heroism, the outward eternal character of the Blood Angels cast in the likeness of Great Sanguinius. He feels it crumbling, becoming dust. Beneath, the curse-power of his primarch’s burning blood rises to the surface. The gift of strength and courage that makes him a superlative warrior now turns dark.

Rage, black as space. Thirst, red as blood.

In this moment, he balances on the edge of the abyss. An Angel of Death, cursed and blessed in equal measure, doused in the vitae of those deserving his fury.

The battle without will be won this day; victory was never in doubt. The battle within…

It lingers still, hidden beneath the mask.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Swallow is a New York Times bestselling author whose stories include the Horus Heresy novels Nemesis, Fear to Tread and The Flight of the Eisenstein, along with Faith & Fire, the Blood Angels books Deus Encarmine, Deus Sanguinius, Red Fury and Black Tide. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy, along with the audio dramas Heart of Rage, Oath of Moment and Legion of One.

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