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Teus of Baal - Guy Haley

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Devastation of Baal’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Teus of Baal

Guy Haley

There were oceans of time and seas of blood.

He floated in them, unborn and unformed.

There were spirals of red and spiked tendrils of black.

They reached through the seas and they caressed him, shaping him, making him.

There were flashes of thought and the presence of a greater mind that overwrote his soul. He knew triumph. He knew defeat. He was touched by an angel's grace and an angel's sorrow.

None were as powerful as the angel's rage.

Salt fluids filled his mouth, ears and eyes, and what was abominable to him once was instead delicious. This woke a sadness in him: the sweet torment of ungovernable thirst.

This passed as all things pass. Fresh knowledge was pushed into his mind from cold intelligences. Methods of war wrote themselves onto the empty pages of his memory.

For a timeless forever he floated in liquid warm as life itself, until it was all over, and the fluid was suddenly gone and he was cold. Machines ground perfect silences into dust with their gears. Light smote his closed eyes.

All he could smell was blood.

'Magnificent,' a voice said.

A sticky substance gummed his eyelids together. He forced them open.

He was reclining at a thirty-degree angle in a box he did not remember entering.

Not a box, he corrected himself. Box was a word the old him would use. This was a sarcophagus; a birthing pod for men made anew, transformed from weakling youths to giants; a womb of angels.

He knew this. He did not know how. He did not remember how he had come to be there. He did not remember the mortal he had been. There was only now.

Two beings in white garments stood either side of the sarcophagus. They did not seem to be men; they were too small. They would come only as far as the lower part of his chest should he stand upright. He calculated the distance between himself and the men, how tall and heavy they were, how strong they were, and with no effort on his part, exactly how to kill them.

The bringing of death was the most important thing of all.

They paid him little attention. Both were engaged with the data-slates they carried. One had his linked to the sarcophagus. They spoke back and forth to each other, but his hearing was dulled and he did not hear what they said after that first word.

Magnificent.

Liquid ran from his ears. A clamour of activity reached him. Hard alarms, the clanking of waking mechanisms, and voices, some low, some shouting. Harps thrummed notifications and trumpets played soft fanfares, their beauty swamped by industrial noise.

He smelled oil, chemicals, bodies kept scrupulously clean, but above all, he smelled blood.

His mouth watered. His teeth moved strangely in their sockets. He thought of the men, of the blood their skins contained. They were still speaking to each other, ignoring him as if he were not there. He desired to feast.

'Implants four through seven read positive function and full integration,' said the first man.

'Confirmation of four through seven,' said the second. 'Praise the Emperor's wisdom.'

They continued like this. He tried to move. He wanted to do them violence. But while his mind raced with new power, his body was weak. His hand shook feebly as he tried to lift it. Tubes running into his veins and arteries further hampered him. He was enmeshed as thoroughly as a fly in a web.

'Subject is awake,' said the first man. He depressed a key on his slate's rune-board. The man looked up at him.

'What is your name, do you know?' The man asked.

'My name?' His voice sounded strange to him. Very deep, rumbling. His throat felt wrong, as if crowded with tumours. He felt sudden shame at his desire to hurt the men.

'Yes, your name. Your angel's name,' said the second patiently.

'My name is...' His forehead creased. All the people of Baal had an angel's name. Not for use. Only the angels used their secret names.

Now he was an angel. His soul was no longer his own. He spoke his secret name freely.

'Teus, my name is Teus,' he said.

The men consulted their devices. Green reflected off their faces.

'Positive self-identification.'

Two others joined them then. Teus' view was trammelled by the sides of the sarcophagus, but he heard them approach. Their footsteps were widely paced and heavy. They were like him. Angels. Space Marines. They wore white robes decorated with a twisted helix and blood drops. They looked the same, like brothers, but there were differences. One was taller and more heavily built. The other, older, had eyes sharp with experience and a searching doubt.

'Subject 00124312 is awake,' said the mortal.

The older Space Marine took the data-slate. He towered over the mortals, preposterously so. These were Teus' peers. A flash of recollection hit him. Men like the mortals had brought him there. They had been bigger than him then. He was only a youth. But he was a boy no longer. Now he was an angel and the men seemed ridiculous dwarfs. Only the Space Marines were his equals.

'One off the wall,' the Space Marine said. He searched Teus' face. 'What do you remember from before?'

A flash of claws and purple-and-white monsters coming in endless streams.

'Xenos,' Teus said. 'I fought them.' His mouth was dry. He wished to slake his new thirst so badly.

'Where?' asked the other Space Marine.

Teus shook his head. 'I don't remember.'

The mortal who had handed over his data slate began to disconnect the pipes and feeds running into Teus' body. Teus would have found this intimacy shameful once. It didn't matter to him any more. His body no longer felt like it was his own.

'Do you remember anything else?' asked the older Space Marine.

Teus thought. He remembered a disappointed man. A hovel that was nevertheless a palace compared to the homes of others. He fought alongside this man. The man was his father.

'I had a father. He died on the walls of the Arx Angelicum,' said Teus. 'He hated me.'

'You have a new father now,' said the younger Space Marine. 'He does not hate you.'

Teus strength left him. He fell forwards. The younger Space Marine caught him.

'Bring a bier. This one is weak,' said the older Space Marine.

'No weaker than the rest, Brother Albinus,' said the younger. A bier was wheeled rapidly into position by more mortals in surgical whites. The younger Space Marine gently placed Teus onto it. Teus tried to help, but his uncoordinated limbs turned his efforts into a groggy resistance.

'Peace now, brother,' said the younger Space Marine, placing Teus' flopping arm onto the bed. 'We are officers of the Sanguinary Priesthood. Listen to me. You have been given a most singular honour. You are an Angel of Death of the line of Sanguinius. You will be taken to the Sanguinary Tower within the Sanguis Corpusculum. Your transformation is not yet done. Your carapace must be fitted so that you might bear the Emperor's armaments against his foes. Survive this, and know glory.'

Teus' head lolled. He moaned. His body would not respond to his commands.

'Brother, do you hear me?' asked the younger priest.

Albinus consulted the data-slate. 'This Teus suffered a brain injury during the choosing on Baal three years ago. He was rejected for it. It had to be repaired before apotheosis. It is a risk recruiting boys like him.'

'We do not have the luxury of fastidiousness. He is well now?'

'Yes.'

'Then he is no longer a boy, but an angel.'

'I say we are doing this too quickly,' said Albinus. 'To assure stability, Cawl's process demands a full year. Six months is not long enough. We are rushing maturity. Who knows what consequences this will bring? These recruits were chosen according to battle's judgement but they are not ready, Brother Gadreel. They are not suitable.'

'They will serve,' said Gadreel. 'War will not wait. The galaxy is aflame. I saw terrors on Guilliman's crusade. What happened here was only a taste.'

The mortals were strapping Teus down. With a supreme effort, Teus reached out his hand and grasped the white surplice of the priest Albinus.

'I am ready. I will serve.' His hand dropped away, leaving a bloody print upon the gown.

'You will need your conviction.' The priest nodded to his aides. 'Take him away. Prepare this sarcophagus for the next recruit.'

They wheeled Teus out. He saw the room properly for the first time then. He expected something small, sacred, a hall decorated with all the angels' arts. But he was in a vast building where hundreds and hundreds of sarcophagi stood in rows and thousands of men and servitors toiled. The sarcophagi had small windows set into the front. Many of them were lit red from within.

A large number of the others were dark, signal lumens on their tops illuminating glass skulls a deep purple instead, showing that their occupants were dead.

The forge was a world of fire and alchemical smells. Scent was the bond. Different sections dealt with different things, all ordered perfectly. Armoured vehicles in one grand hall, munitions production in another, a snaking belt of bolts jiggling and rattling through various processes, starting with empty casings and ending with freshly sealed crates. Aircraft were in a third, armour in a fourth, guns and support systems and all the rest had a room of their own. Then there were the subsections, the clean rooms, the foundries, the ceramite kilns, the breaking centres. Hundreds of serfs toiled in a bewildering range of roles, each peculiar to their holder, welding, folding, fixing, dismantling, assembling under the watchful gaze of the Techmarines, who owed half their allegiance to Baal and the remainder to Mars. Scent tied it all together: lubricant, oil, sweat and hot metal. Every part of the forge smelled the same.

Teus had been given to four others, and they to him. They were brothers newly born from machine mothers. They came initially from Baal Secundus or Baal Primus, but those places were no longer important to them. They were not individuals any more. They were the fist of the Emperor. They were, each gathered in their own way, no longer human, though it was over humanity they would watch.

They were led through the hissing clangour of the forge clad in new bodygloves, their flesh still sore from the implantation of their black carapaces. The blocks of bioplastek felt alien under Teus' skin. They moved oddly, rigid planes where before everything had been soft. Beneath the plates were further hard machine implants; the sinew coils that granted Primaris an even greater strength than the precursor Space Marines possessed.

Despite the haste of their creation, there were rituals still. Mortal servants of the forge took them to their destination. They were proud of what little they knew and their insignia reflected the masters of Mars as much as it did the Chapter. Servo-skulls and cyber-cherubim flocked over them, singing, sounding music and quoting wisdom from Sanguinius' own work.

Molten metal crashed into moulds. Power tools sang their benedictions as base elements were combined and made into the implements of righteous battle. Teus' demi-squad went from one glowing hall to another, and wonders were everywhere.

A tall, armoured door swung wide, exposing many locking bars in the thickness of its metal. Beyond lay darkness that flickered into fitful light as the procession entered. Rack upon rack of new equipment lined their way, stretching out at the sides into darkness where no lumens shone. As Teus' squad marched the lumens lit and extinguished, so that before and behind them was darkness and only in their immediate surroundings was there light.

The armoured door shut, cutting off the noise and the heat. A sombre quiet pressed in.

At a round plaza where many aisles met, five suits of armour waited, bathed in cones of brilliant light. Green eye lenses, black plastek and shining plasteel showed on their components, but the suits lacked any heraldry. The plates were the unfinished grey of ceramite.

The lead blood thrall halted. The choir of cyber constructs gave out one last blare of music, then scattered in every direction.

Green eyes glowed in the dark. A Techmarine stepped forward. His armour was the red of the Cult Mechanicus, a rustier, dirtier hue than the sanguine colour of Baal. Long, twitching mechanical arms overhung his shoulders. Already bulky with genomancy and sacred armour, the tools of his specialisation made the Techmarine bigger, pushing him to the edge of what was recognisably human. He appeared akin to an armoured arachnid rather than a man, similar to the giant fire scorpions of Teus' home.

'I am Brother Engriel,' said the Techmarine. 'I bid you, look upon your wargear!' Though amplified by technology, his voice was rich and pure as any angel's. 'See before you the sacred battleplate of the Emperor. Armoured in it, you shall become mighty, and all will fear you.'

Blood thralls came forwards, two for each Space Marine.

'The process of armouring is complex and you have much to learn,' said Engriel. 'Here you shall begin your first exploration of the mysteries of our most holy machines. The Emperor provides you a two-fold gift. Through his gene-science, your bodies and minds have been made more powerful than any man's. Combined with the fruits of his engineering, you will become unstoppable.'

Teus was taken gently by both hands and led towards one of the armoured suits. It was a brutal work of art, bigger than him, daunting to see, fearsome even while dormant.

'You shall be armoured for the first time,' said the Techmarine. 'You shall leave this place as Space Marines, true servants of the Emperor. These armours are your responsibility. You will paint them and you will care for them. You will learn to honour their machine spirits. Do not see them as separate from you. Without your power armour, you are incomplete. With it, you are the will of the Emperor made manifest.'

Engriel looked to the head of the blood thralls.

'Gird them for war.'

Outside the walls of the fortress monastery new buildings rose every day. It was in one such building that Teus had been reborn. Teus' squad was quartered in the Arx Angelicum itself, and they had an armoury and servants to call their own. The armoury was half in ruins and the servants short in number. They took heart nevertheless. Teus' squad were part of the Chapter's rebirth. New flesh was harder to find than new stone. The Arx Angelicum would be made anew.

More Space Marines were assigned to Teus' squad and five became ten. All of the newcomers were Mars-born. They hailed from Terra, Luna and Titan's orbital slums. Not one of them had been to Baal before Guilliman's crusade swept through the system. All of them had been fighting for years.

Flesh was pushed into the mould of the Great Angel and no matter where it came from it emerged the same. They were beautiful, paragons of humanity as imagined by the finest artist, yet their eyes gave them away. Their eyes had looked on different worlds. They had witnessed different times.

Now they were to be brothers.

Their armour was well used, and they wore it more easily than the five young Baalites. Where Teus and his companions looked the same in their wargear, the armour of the newcomers bore campaign badges, honour markings and awards for valour that set them apart.

'I am Brother-Sergeant Estullundsku,' said their leader. His accent was as strange as his name. 'I will lead you now. We have fought hard in many wars for the primarch, but our fate lies with Dante, with the Blood Angels and with you.'

To each of the newly elevated, one of the veterans was assigned as a mentor. 'This is not the way the Blood Angels train their recruits,' said Estullundsku. 'But for now, when every gun is needed, you must learn the craft of death upon the battlefield.'

Teus' senior brother approached him. He did not remove his helm. Golden bolts hung in a curtain on rings from both his pauldrons, recognitions of superior marksmanship.

'I am brother Arael,' he said and saluted, closed right fist over his Aquila, then he extended his hand in friendship.

'I am brother Teus.' He took the others hand. 'You are not of Baal, but you have an angel's name.'

'I took this name when we were assigned to the crusade,' said Arael. 'Most of us did. We are all sons of Sanguinius here. Arael is who I am now.' But they were not Blood Angels, not yet, for every one of the new five bore a pale grey chevron over their heraldry that cut the wings and blood drop of the Chapter in two.

'This marking no longer has meaning,' said Estullundsku. He patted his own pauldron. 'We have waited months for you, brothers, but now we are complete. It is time we all became what we were meant to be.'

They went to a chapel whose ceiling was held up by a scaffold of plasteel poles. The five veterans went inside.

'Wait here,' Estullundsku told his new charges. 'There is one last thing we must do alone. Be our guard while we work. Do this as an honour to us, your new brothers.'

They took with them supplies, tins of metasolvents, lapping powder and cloths. Teus guessed what they intended. They remained inside for an hour. They sang songs and spoke the names of fallen friends Teus would never know. Meanwhile Teus and his comrades waited. Thralls and brothers passed by the small chapel. It was situated on a well-used path and work was going on to restore the broken fortress in that section, but none paid any notice to the private ceremony. There were many new brothers in the Chapter. They chose their own ways to acclimatise.

Estullundsku emerged first. The grey chevron had been stripped from his livery. Now his left shoulder pad showed only the black emblem of the Chapter. The right had been scrubbed clean, as had his right kneepad, ready to take fresh markings of company and squad.

He clasped Teus' wrist, then another of the brothers. The veterans came out, all with the same alterations to their markings, and all of them went to each of the new recruits in turn to give them the warriors handshake.

'Now we are all Blood Angels,' said Estullundsku.

Teus covered Arael from behind a large boulder. The day was choked with kicked-up dust, but his retinal display was a welter of detail and targeting information that led his every move. His bolt rifle kicked in his hands, the stock pushing into his shoulder, His pauldron's workings whined and purred as they adjusted around the movement.

Three bolts sped out from the gun, roaring off into the dust on tails of yellow fire. They hit their target and blew apart. Something screeched in the haze. His battleplate enhanced the silhouette with a thin yellow outline, showing him six limbs and a head with a broad crest. It fell down dead and the line blinked out.

Kill confirmed, his suit informed him. He kept the aural notification engaged. He preferred it. He was surprised to learn he was still allowed preferences.

He kept to three-shot bursts. It suited him. The rest of the squad were moving on, disappearing into the rising sandstorm. One more kill and he would follow.

He chose another target, levelled the gun and squeezed the trigger.

Two more hits and an angry blink of red informing him of a miss. He waited for the kill notification. It did not come.

Three bolts left, his ammunition display told him. He prepared to reload.

Orders squawked at him through his vox-bead. Something stopped him from leaving the cover of the rock. He peered around carefully.

A vomited splash of burning liquid hissed onto the stone. Teus yanked his head back. Droplets hit his arm and pitted the ceramite.

'Teus, rejoin squad immediately. You are out of formation,' Estullundsku voxed.

'Negative, brother-sergeant,' said Teus. 'Hostile approaching.'

A shrill of alarms cut off Estullundsku's response. A talon shaped like a scythe whipped out of nowhere and sheared a slice of the rock away. Threat indicators in Teus' helm flashed at him urgently. He darted around the rock as another rush of stinking bio-acid sluiced over the ground.

A xenoform of the warrior type stalked around the boulder after him. Its lower arms were bonded to a weapon subform. This was truly grotesque, with its own pair of eyes set back behind a spout force-evolved from its mouth. Tiny legs and arms curled up under the chitinous rear, gripping at a grossly enlarged stomach sac that heaved and pulsed.

The primary beast's hands were distorted to better grip its parasite. Its fingers plunged directly into the bioweapon via holes that oozed a clear slime. Throbbing tubes connected the two creatures' circulatory systems together; the weapon could not survive without its bearer.

The tyranid warrior had been injured, Teus suspected, by his own bolt-fire. There was one large crater weeping bright green fluid in its chest. The left of its upper arms had been blown off at the shoulder. The third bolt from the burst must have passed within inches of its head. Had Teus' aim been better this would not be happening to him now.

The tyranid screeched. The boulder was taller than it was, blocking them from each other's view. Teus slipped around the rock. Heavy hoof-steps shook the ground.

He gritted his teeth. He would not spend the whole battle chasing a single xenos around a boulder. There was no honour in that.

He dropped his magazine from the base of his gun and slammed in a fresh load of bolts, resetting the weapon to full automatic. Rearmed, he stopped, paused, then threw himself around the boulder into the path of the tyranid.

The beast screeched. He opened fire. The first three bolts went wild. The next hit the disgusting bag attached to the rear of the weapon. Searing liquid flooded down the warriors legs and ate into the ground, billowing white vapours as the sand dissolved. The beast stomped forwards with surprising speed, its remaining arm tilting up and coming down hard. Teus fired again. Two bolts slammed into the creature's chest before the talon crashed into his gun and wrenched it from his grasp.

The creature swayed. Whatever passed for its blood was running in great amounts down its front. Most of the external ribs had been blown apart and the secondary set, as well as the organs beneath, were exposed.

Teus leapt, pushing off with both legs and smashing into the tyrannic warrior in a high tackle. It was taller than him, but he weighed more in his battleplate and the beast was weakened. It stumbled back. Teus wrapped his arms around its ruined chest and kicked down, smashing its knee, and the beast fell. The remaining talon scraped over his power pack, making his armour spirit cry out in anger, but the tyranid's days were done. Teus ripped a krak grenade from his belt and plunged it into the beast's open chest, thumbing it into activation as he did. He threw himself backwards clumsily, clearing the xenos as the grenade exploded. The creature's upper half disintegrated. Its legs kicked spasmodically, and it was still.

Getting up off his back was difficult. The power pack dragged at him. He rolled back and forth without success. Apparently there was a knack to standing from that position. He had yet to master it.

Arael emerged from the dust.

'Estullundsku sent me to fetch you,' he said. He looked at the blasted remains of the tyranid. He shifted his gun to one hand and leaned down to haul Teus up to his feet.

'Good work, brother, but the battle is this way.' He nodded to the side. 'Don't forget your gun.'

Gunships screamed overhead. The thumping percussion of heavy artillery fire rocked the desert. The tyranid remnant group died under the might of Imperial guns.

Teus of Baal took up his weapon and ran wholeheartedly towards his destiny.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood, Astorath: Angel of Mercy, Baneblade and Shadowsword. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from The Devastation of Baal.

Already the morning gongs were ringing when Uigui the water seller roused himself for another day of thankless toil.

Uigui rose fully clothed, and went to empty his bladder into the home-made purification unit in the corner. Every drop of water was precious on Baal Secundus, whatever the source.

His single-roomed home held three cots, a table, the recyc unit and precious little else. Old transit pallets heaped with threadbare blankets against the cold of desert night were their beds. On the way to the recyc unit, Uigui passed his great burden, his idiot son. The boy had gone away to the Chapter trials full of hope, and come back minus his wits.

‘Get up! Up! Up, you little fool!’ Uigui kicked at his son’s booted feet. The boy thrashed awake and threw up his hands in alarm. A frightened face peeped out between filthy fingers.

‘Get up!’ growled Uigui. ‘Dawn’s coming – can’t you hear the Angel’s gongs?’ He looked out of a window of low-grade alabaster set into the wall of unpainted adobe. Daybreak should have shone pink through the stone. Instead a red darkness lingered outside.

Most mornings were cold but beautiful, the sky flawlessly smooth and tinted a deep rose by the light of the Red Scar. Sometimes, the colours were enough to stop Uigui and make him forget how much he hated his life. ‘Not that you can tell,’ grunted Uigui. ‘Red mist. A thick one too.’

‘D-d-d-d-do we-e-e have to, Da?’ said the boy.

Uigui looked at the boy with clear hatred as he urinated into the recyc funnel. ‘Y-y-yes!’ he spat back, mocking the boy’s stutter. ‘Now, up! I need help to fill the flasks, age be cursed, or I’d turn you over to the Emperor’s mercy and be rid of you!’

Uigui adjusted his filthy clothes and stamped, bow backed and swaying, to the door of gappy wood that separated the single room of his home from the goods yard outside. He clutched at his lower back as he reached for the door handle and rubbed fruitlessly at the pain in his bones, his mood souring further.

‘Be kinder to the boy. He is my daughter’s son,’ croaked the aged voice of the room’s final occupant. The coverings on the third bed shifted, the lump beneath them growing thin arms and knotted hands as a woman even more wasted and hunched than Uigui emerged. ‘You owe him some love for her memory, if you can’t summon some for the boy himself.’

The old woman coughed hard. Phlegm rattled around her throat. Uigui looked at her in disgust. Her face was as deeply lined as the pit of a fruit, as if time had rotted away the pleasant outer flesh, leaving the bitter, craggy interior of her soul exposed for all to see.

‘Where’s your daughter now, you old witch?’ he said. ‘Dead. Dead and gone, leaving me with a fool and a crone for company.’

‘You are cruel,’ said the old woman. Clustered carcinomas blighted her face. She had only a few more months of life in her, but her eyes were bright and shrewd. Uigui hated her eyes most of all. ‘The Emperor will punish you.’

Uigui snarled. ‘We’ll all starve long before the Emperor notices if you and your precious grandson don’t rouse yourselves. We must be at the gates before they open for the day.’

The woman shrank back into her blankets. ‘The Red Mist is here. You will have no customers.’

Uigui rested his hand on the piece of scrap he had fashioned into the door handle. It was worn almost featureless. He had unearthed the metal in his youth from one of the moon’s ruined cities. An unidentifiable artefact of the system’s lost paradisal past, it could once have been a piece of art, it could have been a component from a wondrous machine. It could have been anything. Now it was old, ugly and broken, suitable only for the coarsest work. Just like Uigui.

‘Then we will starve. Get up. We go to work.’ He flipped the door open, letting it bang into the wall to show his anger.

The Red Mist was the worst he’d ever seen: a choking, thick vapour laden with sand particles. Only on a low gravity lunar body like Baal Secundus was such a phenomenon possible, though Uigui didn’t know that. His worldview was necessarily limited. What he saw was a day’s business ruined. Red Mist was iron sharp in smell and texture, a soupy brume that lacerated the nostrils. He coughed and pulled up his scarf to cover his mouth and nose. He had no clip to hold it in place, so he pressed it to the contours of his face with his left hand.

Though his home was modest, his stockyard contained a fortune. Four huge terracotta urns, taller than men and too wide for the embrace of two people to meet around, lined the wall. With such wealth to protect, the courtyard was better built than the house. The walls were of stone, not mud brick, and high, the tops studded with rusty spikes and broken glass. The gate was deliberately small, triple-barred, plated in scavenged metal, upon whose pocked surfaces the marks of the ancients were still visible, when the light was right.

There was no sun. The early day was tainted a bloody murk. The urns were looming shapes, the wall invisible. The yard was little over twenty feet side to side, but the Red Mist was so dense that day Uigui could not see across.

He paused. At the very least the fog would be full of toxins given off by Baal Secundus’ poisoned seas. If the sands in the mist had been picked up over one of the old cities, the rad levels would be high. Uigui supposed he should fetch his rad-ticker from inside. Frankly, he could not motivate himself to retrieve it. He was old. A dose of radiation from the badlands could not shorten his life by much, and if it did, what of it? He was tired of life. It was hard and unforgiving.

Sometimes he thought of ending it all, the misery, the graft, the wearing company of his son and mother-in-law. He had no illusions death would bring a happy afterlife in the Emperor’s care; all he wanted was peace. He could not bring himself to do it. The mindless will of genes forced him to continue living, which he did begrudgingly.

Blinking gritty moisture from his eyes, he headed for the lean-to where he kept his cart. A pair of tall wheels bracketed two cargo beds, one above the other. Three dozen clay flasks were on each level. He fetched the first and took it to the tap attached to the nearest urn. To fill it he had to let his scarf drop. The dust in the mist tickled his nose and he swore. Rusty water ran into the bottle, making him want to piss again. His bladder was another thing that was failing him.

‘Boy! Boy! Get out here and help me!’

The door creaked. Out came the old woman instead, her face veiled in the ridiculous manner of her desert tribe. Uigui should never have married out of town.

‘Where’s that damn boy?’ growled Uigui.

‘Let him breakfast, you old miser, he’ll be out in a moment.’

‘He’s a waste of food and water,’ said Uigui. He shut off the tap, pressed the cap closed on the bottle and fetched another flask.

‘It’s not his fault,’ said the old woman.

‘I think we all know that it’s the Angel’s fault,’ said Uigui quietly.

‘Hsst!’ she said. ‘That is heresy. Would you leave him without a father as well as his mind?’

‘He went to their trials a strong youth, and was returned to me a fool. Who else should I blame?’

‘Fate,’ she said. ‘He was not meant to join them, and he is getting better.’

‘He is not,’ said Uigui sourly. He set the full flask into his cart, and fetched a third.

The crone shuffled across the courtyard to the cart, her long skirts disturbing the moist sand of the ground. There she stopped, but she did not help, only watched him, a judgemental phantom in the fog. Uigui gave her a filthy look.

In her gnarled hands a small auto-tarot deck made its tooth-grinding clicks. She pushed the button at the side. The tiles behind its scratched viewing pane clattered into place. She studied the little pictures on them a moment, then pressed the button again. Then again. Uigui fought the urge to strike her, to knock the tarot from her hand and cast her out. The tarot was the instrument of the Emperor. Even he balked at such blasphemy.

‘Help me, then,’ he said. He squinted at the sky. ‘The sun is rising.’ The fog remained as thick as ever, but the light behind it was getting stronger. ‘We are late.’

The old woman hooked her tarot deck to her rope belt, took a flask up and went to the second urn.

‘Today is a day of great portents,’ she said.

‘You say that every day,’ said Uigui.

The woman shrugged. ‘Today it is true.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, but he was wary of what she said. She had a knack for reading the tarot. He half believed she was a witch. In truth, he was frightened of her. He slammed the latest filled flask into the cart hard, making the others rattle. ‘Where is that boy?’

The boy pushed the cart. At least he was good for that. Uigui and the old woman walked behind. The flasks knocked and clinked in their trays, warning others they were coming. It was a good advertisement, but under the cover of the fog the noise made Uigui nervous. For all that Angel’s Fall was under the direct administration of the Blood Angels, there was always the possibility of robbery on a day of mist.

They met no misfortune as they walked the street from Waterer’s Row towards the Sanguinian Way, the small city’s main street. There were precious few people about. Those figures that appeared suddenly out of the murk were swaddled head to foot, and just as quickly disappeared.

‘Quicker, boy,’ grumbled Uigui. ‘We want a good spot. I want to get there before they are all gone.’

They turned onto the Sanguinian Way. At its far end was the Place of Choosing, where the giant statue of the Great Angel spread his arms and wings to face the eastern sky. Immense though Sanguinius’ effigy was, the fog obscured it totally. With the majestic statue hidden, the cramped, low buildings that made up Angel’s Fall seemed ruder than ever. It did not look like a holy city. The fog forced attention onto its inadequacies. Even the Sanguinian Way was meanly proportioned, and crooked. Without Sanguinius, Angel’s Fall could have been any town on any backward, arid world in the galaxy.

Gongs boomed from unseen towers, signifying the start of the Peaceday markets. Only a handful of stalls had been set up at the roadside, and foot traffic on the way was low. Uigui reckoned visitors to Angel’s Fall would be fewer than usual, though there were always some. The Red Mist discouraged travel. Not only was it toxic, but Baal’s violent wildlife hunted under its cover. He cursed his luck. Water was expensive to both the buyer and the seller. The price he’d get for his stock barely covered the cost, and he owed a lot of money to Anton the reguliser. Anton took prompt payment of debts very seriously. Uigui rubbed at the stump of his left little finger, a reminder of the last time he’d been late with a payment. Anton had been nothing but apologetic; he had said he had no choice.

Uigui thought they would have to stay out late, selling to people exiting the city to travel in the cool of the night. Assuming the mist lifts today at all, he fretted. Such a fog was rare. Baal Secundus’ principal weathers were wind and dust storms, but there was not a breath of a breeze today.

‘This weather is unnatural,’ he said.

‘A day of portents,’ said his mother-in-law in satisfaction.

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘It’s just a day. Boy. Here.’ Uigui pointed out a patch of ground in the lee of the Temple of the Emperor. The temple occupied a whole block by itself, and another of Angel’s Fall’s major streets intersected the Sanguinian Way there.

‘This will do.’ The gongs continued to ring. ‘Why all this racket?’ Uigui said.

‘Happenings. Baalfora has much in store for us today,’ said the old woman, using the local name for Baal Secundus. She settled herself down. Her joints grumbled, and she grumbled back at them, forcing her old legs to cross. Upon skirts held taut between her knees she set her tarot deck and began repetitively clicking at the workings. Uigui bared his teeth at her. He took out his irritation on the boy.

‘Come on, boy, set out the table! Where are the cups? By the Emperor, we’d all die if you were in charge here!’

‘S-s-s-orry, father,’ said the boy.

‘Don’t call me that,’ he said. ‘My son is dead. Stolen by angels. There is no one to inherit my business once I am gone. Do not presume your place.’

The boy bowed his head to hide his tears, showing the ugly scar running across the top of his head. Uigui hated the sight of that most of all. He was sure had his boy not fallen he would be up there on Baal as a warrior of the Emperor. He stared at it as the boy set up the little table that folded out from the side of the cart and put out a set of small bronze cups. Something like grief hurt him. He responded with anger.

‘Quicker!’ he snapped.

The gongs were still booming long after they should have stopped. He squinted into the dim morning. There was another sound, a distant rumbling, under the clamour of the gongs.

‘What is that?’ he whispered.

‘V-v-void ships?’ ventured the boy.

‘Silence!’ snapped Uigui. But even as his anger flew out of his mouth, he thought the boy might be right. Angel’s Fall was no stranger to the ships of the Angels. There were offworlders too, who came to pay their respects to the place where Sanguinius, purest of the Emperor’s progeny, was discovered. But rarely did they arrive in such numbers that the sound of their descent was so constant.

Uigui heard the crunch of heavy feet on sand coming down the way. He swore at himself. Angels. They would have no use for his water.

‘Bow! Bow!’ he hissed. He dropped his head, and forced his idiot son to kneel.

A huge armoured figure emerged from the murk. Armour black, his helm cast in the shape of a skull. A Space Marine priest, death incarnate. Uigui trembled. He dropped to his knees in fright, waiting for the figure to pass by.

He did not. The footsteps stopped by the little cart. Uigui felt the Angel’s regard upon him. His bladder twinged yet again.

‘Be at peace, blessed son of Baal Secundus,’ said the warrior. His voice was inhumanly deep and thickly accented.

Uigui looked up. The grimacing skull glared down at him. Breathing hoses were clamped between its stylised teeth, and eye-lenses of glowing green set below the angry brow. The armour hissed and whined in response to microshifts in the Space Marine’s posture, making Uigui more afraid.

The warrior looked down both streets of the crossroads.

‘The great square. Where is it?’

Though made hollow and booming by its projection machinery, the warrior’s voice was kindly. Still Uigui could not see past the terrible visage glowering at him. He stared dumbly back.

‘Waterseller, I mean you no harm,’ said the Angel. ‘I come to pay my respects to my lord. Where is his statue?’

Uigui trembled and flung up his arm. He intended to say ‘That way, my lord!’ A strangled mewl came out of his mouth instead.

‘My thanks, and my blessings,’ said the Chaplain. ‘The Emperor keep you.’

He glanced up at the great temple, then strode away.

‘W-w-why does he not know?’ said the boy stupidly.

‘I do not know,’ said Uigui. Still upon his knees he gazed fearfully at the departing giant.

‘M-m-m-more!’ said the boy, and shrank back behind the cart.

Uigui followed his son’s wavering finger. More Space Marines, dozens of them. Uigui had never seen so many at one time and his body shook in terror. They walked past, armour dull in the foggy daylight. Uigui could see clearly enough to know they were not Blood Angels. Their armour was adorned in a similar manner to that of the masters of Baal. The heavy plates were beautifully formed, covered in scrollwork and delicate embellishments, and decked with bloodstone drips cased in gold, but the red of their armour was an unfamiliar hue, their helms and trim were white, and their markings were strange.

Uigui watched, amazed, as the column of warriors moved by in solemn silence, voiceless but for the growls and hum of their armour. It was not unusual to see other angels claiming descent from the Great Angel in Angel’s Fall, but only in ones or twos. When a second group in yet different colours marched by, these armoured half in black and half in bloody red, Uigui’s mouth fell open. The gongs boomed. Outside the wall, the roaring of braking jets grew louder.

‘Th-th-there’s hundreds of them!’ stuttered the boy.

For a moment, Uigui forgot his anger, and put his arm around his broken son.

‘W-w-w-why so many?’ the boy said.

‘They come to pay respect to their father. They come to pray,’ said Uigui. ‘It is a marvel.’

The old woman chuckled, a low growling sound like a felid about to bite. The tarot tiles rattled.

‘What is it?’ Uigui said.

The old woman’s smile was evident in her voice. ‘The burning tower, the bloody angel, the falling star, the foundered void ship – these are fell signs.’

Uigui looked sharply back at her. ‘What do you mean?’

The old woman regarded him through the cloth of her veil. ‘They are not coming here to worship, you foolish man,’ she said. ‘They have come here to die.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Darkness in the Blood in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Maria Zolotukhina

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ISBN 13: 978-1-78999-019-5

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