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Champion of Oaths - John French

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

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CHAMPION OF OATHS

By John French

'A sword takes the edge it is given.'

- Aphorism of the Gobinal Blade Clans, Terra (age unknown)

'Are you ready?'

Sigismund raised his eyes. Archamus looked back. The Master of Huscarls' gaze was steady.

Sigismund let his breath relax through him; let the rising adrenaline drain from his thoughts; let his fingers hang, empty and still. Above him, the black walls of the Temple of Oaths rose to its vaulted ceiling. The names of the Legion looked down at him, marked in gold, etched in stone. Fires burned in bronze bowls that hung from iron chains. In the shadows, his brothers waited - two hundred warriors, armoured in black and yellow, draped with white-and-black tabards, weapons resting in their hands. The Templars. The guardians of the oaths of the VII Legion. This was the place where every warrior of the Imperial Fists made his oath to brother, primarch and Emperor, and the Templars protected it with their swords and with their lives.

Archamus was still looking at Sigismund, waiting. The Master of Huscarls had assumed his rank only a year before; but there was a weight to his presence even before he became Rogal Dorn's chief bodyguard. Archamus was one of the First, those warriors raised to the Legion after the Emperor found Rogal Dorn. That alone would have been enough to make Archamus deserving of respect. He was there as the proxy of Rogal Dorn to see that all was done correctly. If Sigismund failed, the primarch would not be there to see his weakness. Sigismund gave a single nod.

'Very well,' said Archamus, and held out the sword he had brought from the Phalanx's armoury. Another sword hung at his back, sheathed in black leather and silver; the oath blade of the Temple, the sword that would be Sigismund's to carry if he passed through the trial to come.

Sigismund gripped the hilt of the proffered blade and felt the weight of the weapon sink into his arm as Archamus let go. The servos in his armour purred as he turned to face the circle of his brothers.

'Begin,' called Archamus, and the first of the two hundred Templars came at Sigismund in a blur of steel.

Night fell over the Ionus Plateau. The drift camps covering the land were new, a consequence of Unification, and the wars that had been fought for it. Those that could flee the wars between old tyrants and new had come here and sheltered in the ruins of forgotten empires. They had made a labyrinth of metal and fabric that spread for two hundred kilometres and bled out into the rad zones to the south. It was tainted land. Not tainted in the way that the toxin-laden wastes of the Gobi were, but tainted by the stories that clung to the place. That was why it had been empty when the refugees came.

The old monarchs and despots who had carved their palaces into the faces of the mountains, and whose tombs dotted the plains beneath, had been enchanters and spirit speakers. They had vanished into the oblivion of Old Night, leaving their kingdoms to decay and half-memories of fear in the lands that bordered them. The refugees had put aside those fears, the need for sanctuary overcoming the ghosts of old stories. Still, though, few would look up at the ruins or touch the tombs.

Except the young. To them the dead past was there to be picked up and worn like a discarded cloak. The packs of youths that gathered and roamed the drift had taken the old stories and made them their own. When they went on rampages, it was in horned masks of jagged metal daubed in white, and crowns of polished scrap. Their gang names spoke to the tales of the land: Blood Spectres, Corpse Kings, the Queens of Hades. They came at night, and killed, or inflicted cruelty on those who could not defend themselves. Most of all, they preyed on the thousands of orphans that lived in the cracks of life in drift camps. Some said the gangs took those they could and made them their own, replenishing their ranks by kidnapping.

Sigismund put his eye to the boards pulled over the door into the deserted cistern. It had not rained in days, and a metallic shiver of static hung in the air with the smell of dust and the smoke of cooking fires. The drift camps extended in every direction, a sea of flotsam and tattered fabric. Ropes of scrap bells chimed in the hot breeze. Electro kites hung in the air, tethered to empty charge reservoirs, waiting for the lightning to fall. To the west, the crags of the Aflonia mesa rose to scrape the bruised sky. The bones and skulls of old fortresses shone orange and gold on its cliff faces as the last of the sun's light cut across the land.

'I can't hear them,' said Nestro, pulling his legs closer under himself and turning to look at Sigismund and Thera. 'Maybe they won't come…'

'They will come,' said Thera softly, her voice somehow calm. 'Just stay back when they do.'

'What are you going to do?' asked Sigismund, his voice not hiding the fear that was rising in him.

Thera looked at him. Her eyes were dark, slashed by the cooling light falling through the gaps in the boards covering the door. One of the other children huddling in the dark, further into the old cistern, whimpered.

'It will be all right,' said Thera.

He heard it then, the rustle of footsteps outside.

Thera closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the metal of the iron bar in her hands. She had wound strips of leather around one end, making it a grip.

'Why do you do that?' he heard himself ask.

She did not reply. Above them, the footsteps outside stopped. Shadows blocked the slivers of fading light coming through the boarded-up door, firelight replaced the dusty warmth of the fading sun.

Sigismund could feel the hammer of his heart in his chest. They would not survive this. This would be it, the end of the life that seemed to have begun with a city burning and him running and running out into the night.

Something sharp rattled across the boards to the door, and a hissing laugh trembled through the air. More rose to join it until it was a rasping chorus of mockery. The light of flame torches rippled through the gaps in the entrance.

'Come down to the kingdom, little ones…' called a high voice. 'Come and see the dead…'

A blow shook the board door.

Thera opened her eyes. Sigismund saw a momentary tremor in her hands, and then they went still. She began to rise to her feet. Sigismund saw a flash of pain on her face. She shifted, trying to keep weight off her left leg. Some of the smaller children moaned. Thera turned towards the door. Sigismund reached out and caught her arm. She looked back at him, the bruises and half-healed scabs merged into the shadows filling the hollows of her face. She shook her head once.

'This needs to happen,' she said. 'Otherwise they won't stop, not now. I hurt them too much, but not enough.'

He held on for a second returning her look, blood ringing in his ears.

'There will be too many this time,' he said. She shook her head, he could not tell whether in agreement or denial, and pulled open the door.

Anaxsus came first. Anaxsus the Grey, oldest of the Temple brothers, raised to the sword in the Northern Hives of Terra, a warrior of mark before the VII Legion even had a name to carry to the stars, and now he was first to come at Sigismund. A blow with his mace from above, two-handed, strength flowing into stone and steel. Sigismund met the blow, let it slam his sword down, let the blade pivot with the momentum of the impact, and slashed the edge into Anaxsus' face-plate. Ceramite cracked, and Sigismund was already striking again, twice more, low and high, and Anaxsus was pivoting to drag his mace up to attack. Sigismund's kick cracked the ceramite at the back of Anaxsus' knee, and his sword swept around as the warrior stumbled.

'I yield!' growled Anaxsus. The edge of Sigismund's sword was touching his neck. Sigismund moved the sword away.

Behind him, Ecturo was already in the circle, shortsword and dagger drawn, unhelmed, face grim as he lunged. Sigismund met the lunge and cut at Ecturo's neck. The blow did not land. Ecturo ducked under the cut, blocked Sigismund's sword with his own, and stabbed up into Sigismund's ribs. The strike was fast and fluid, almost beautiful.

Ecturo had come from Arcanisis and brought the play of sword and knife with him from that world of swamps and iron. Induction into the Legion and his years in the 85th Assault Battalion had blended the skills of his birth world with post-human strength and agility. He was lethal in every way that a Space Marine and a warrior of the Temple should be.

Sigismund let the knife point almost touch him and then slammed his weight forwards, sword pressing and tangling Ecturo's legs. The young warrior tried to move back, but he was half falling, his advantage stolen in an eyeblink. Sigismund caught Ecturo's left arm, pivoted and threw him with a snap of force. Ecturo hit the floor, began to rise, but Sigismund's sword edge touched the back of his neck.

'I yield!'

But the next warrior was already in the circle, already cutting, and the dance of blades and killing strokes flowed on without cease. Two hundred blades wielded by the finest of the Legion, two hundred blades turned on him one after another until he failed or until he reached the end. There could be no other way, not for the Templars, not for the Legion. To be the First of Templars, leader of the Champions of Oaths, he had to face them all, one after another. On the battlefield, they stood together; they were brothers, made one by blood and oaths, but here he had to stand alone.

His sword met another blow and the clamour of steel echoed beneath the oath-marked walls.

Quiet. Echoing quiet and the ripple of light from flame torches spilling through the door to the world outside. No breath, no cries, nothing to undo the crack of metal on skull, and the rustle of a body folding to the floor.

Sigismund did not move.

'Thera?' came a small voice from further back in the cistern cave. Sigismund looked around. Nestro looked back at him, eyes wide above his knees. Nestro… Quick Nestro, not the smallest, but the one who had clung to Thera like a shadow. Nestro who had somehow come alone from Cypra after it had burned. Nestro who shook at the sight of naked flame. The boy was shivering now. 'Thera?' he asked again, the edge of panic and fear breaking through. 'Where is Thera?'

'Your kings are here,' came the high hissing voice from outside. 'Come out into the dark…'

Sigismund closed his eyes for a second. He drew a breath, held it and felt the blood beat through him.

He did not want to do this. He did not want to die in the dust, bones broken, bleeding while his killers cheered like jackals. He did not want this to have to be him. He was not a fighter. He was not even the eldest after Thera. He was quick, but not strong; always the one who had survived but never the one who had won. But he was here, and if he did not move, did not step out beyond the door, then he would be surrendering for them all.

Sigismund opened his eyes. He stood, feeling himself shake as he stepped to the door. He saw them, figures in the firelight, taller than him, thin limbs under grey rags, masks made from battered metal, crowns of sharp edges, knives and chains in their hands.

He did not look down at Thera lying in front of the door. The ground was damp under his feet as he walked forward, sticky and clotted.

The crowd of masks shifted, chains clinked.

'You here to kneel or to join her?' asked a high voice from one of the masks.

Sigismund could hear the breath sawing in and out of his lungs. His bare foot touched the metal of the iron bar resting in Thera's unmoving fingers. He bent down, but kept his eyes steady on the crowd of masks. The leather wound grip of the bar was sticky with blood as he lifted it.

Laughter began behind one of the masks and ran through the crowd.

'Another for the bone pits…'

The bar felt heavy in his hand. He had fought before - all the lost of the drifts had - but he had no idea what he was going to do. He felt his arms begin to shake.

He saw Thera in his memory, saw her raise the iron bar and rest it on her forehead, heard himself ask the question she had not answered.

'Why do you do that?'

The breath slowed in his lungs. The tremble in his limbs stilled. The circle of watching masks froze in the unfinished second, poised on the edge of the rush that would surge forward in a blur of blows.

Slowly, carefully, he touched the cold iron to his forehead.

Blood. There was blood on Sigismund's face and in his mouth. A blow had shattered his jaw on the left-hand side. His vision was a smeared blur. Tatters of broken ceramite shook from his frame as he lunged forwards. The servos on his right leg had gone so he was dragging the dead weight of his armour with muscle alone. Clotting blood ran from the joins in his armour where blade edges had found an opening.

Sigismund's lunge slid past Calivar's stave and struck him in the chest. The force of the blow cannoned the banner bearer off his feet. With its power field lit, the sword would have passed clean through Calivar's torso. Sigismund was already above the other warrior, spinning his sword and ramming the point down, stopping so that the killing blow hovered about Calivar's face.

'I yield,' gasped Calivar.

Sigismund straightened, turning to meet the first blow of the next opponent. The blow did not come. His eyes flicked over the circle of armoured figures, familiar eyes watching him from bloodied faces and broken helms. Was it over? Had he faced them all?

His hearts slowed, his thoughts cleared. The blurs of combat defined themselves, settling in his mind.

No, he had not faced them all. It was not yet over.

'Are you ready, lad?' The voice was low, and crackled with static. He closed his eyes for a second as he heard the clatter and hiss of gear-driven steps.

He turned.

A mountain of black iron and yellow armour plates stood across the circle from him. It was not a Space Marine any more, not truly. Just as genecraft had pushed Sigismund and his brothers into being something beyond human, so the craft of the forge masters had pushed the warrior facing him beyond post-human.

There were lines in the figure's shape that echoed Adeptus Astartes power armour, and the heraldry gave no doubt as to its alliance and heritage: black cross on white, clenched fist on yellow. But it stood almost twice Sigismund's height. A green slot sat high on the headless torso. Sigismund could see eyes in the glowing amnion behind the armourglass. Its limbs were metal, its muscles pistons. A hammer hung in the grip of the left arm, a shield of pitted metal in the right. Both were massive, beyond what even a Space Marine in full armour could lift. But this was not a Space Marine. It was one of the dead who had chained himself to life and war. Dreadnought - that was what they called them all now, all those brothers of the twenty Legions who slept the iron sleep and woke to fight the war that had killed them.

But this was not any Dreadnought. This was a warrior who had received the laurels of victory from the Emperor's hand at Mesora while Terra was still divided, who had fought at the siege of Luna and fought at the side of great Horus when he alone stood as the Emperor's son. Appius, the first to refuse the gates of death and take the iron sleep - Father of Dreadnoughts.

'Master,' said Sigismund, bowing his head for a moment but not lowering his gaze.

Fibre cables bunched under armour plates, pistons flexed in Appius' arms.

'Begin,' boomed the Dreadnought and exploded forwards in a thunder roll of iron and steel.

Sigismund fell. The stone floor slammed into his back. He rolled, coming to his feet in an eyeblink. A blow struck his shoulder. Pain exploded through his flesh, he staggered, brought his sword up to cut, but another blow hit his arm. The force was light, precise, but it still almost shattered his forearm. He staggered again, snapped forward, and cold iron slammed into his forehead. He fell again and rolled again, but as he rose it was to see the old warrior already walking out of the training circle.

Sigismund made to kneel and await instruction, but Appius flicked a glance at him and that was enough to hold Sigismund where he was. The weapon master was cleaning the unpowered mace he had been wielding. His beard and hair were the grey of the cinders covering the practice floor. He wore a quilted tunic over a black body glove. The flesh of his hands gleamed as they cleaned the weapon, the scar tissue of old wars glossy under the stab lights. A tattoo of a raptor head and lightning bolts sat on his left cheek.

'What was your mistake?' asked Appius.

'I was too slow to recover,' said Sigismund without hesitation.

The old warrior raised an eyebrow. 'You are certain?'

'You were in a position to strike me as I moved. I was not quick enough to disrupt your timing.'

The old warrior held his eye on Sigismund for a long moment and then turned away, hefting the mace and carrying it to one of a series of weapon racks bolted to the floor. Sigismund waited.

The training chamber was empty apart from the two of them, the air still, the deck and walls silent to the vibration of engines that shook them when the Phalanx was under power. The fortress ship of the Imperial Fists was at anchor, swallowing munitions and supplies from the void stations of Uranus before passing through the Elysian gate and out to the edge of the crusade. It was a rare moment of quiet in a space-born city of war. For Sigismund, it had brought him back to the training deck and Appius' lessons. It was as much a test as it was a lesson, of course.

He was amongst the youngest to be nominated to take the Temple Oath. Twelve years separated him from the drift camps of Ionus and the boy the Legion had taken to make a warrior. Those years had given him a purpose that he had never known existed. Always advancing, never flinching, never taking a step back, he had fought battles and faced the enemies of the Imperium, seen triumph and defeat and learned the lessons they taught: that both could undo you if you let them. He had never tried to rise in rank or position. He had simply faced what was before him.

Appius selected a sword. In size and shape it was the twin of the blade that lay on the ground in front of Sigismund. Appius rolled his wrist, letting the blade hiss through the air. The motion looked unconscious, relaxed, but Sigismund could read the variation in every cut. In the days since the weapon master had begun his training, Sigismund had realised that nothing Appius did was by accident - every movement and gesture had purpose.

'Stand,' said Appius. Sigismund stood, raising the sword with him. Appius walked into the circle of cinders, his own blade held loose at his side. 'Come at me,' he said.

Sigismund sprang forwards, blade rising for a first cut that would split Appius' face from eyes to chin.

The flat of Appius' sword slammed into Sigismund's head. Light exploded behind his eyes, but he was already moving turning his failed cut into a back-handed slash that would arc under Appius' guard. A white-hot line slid across his shoulder. Blood poured down his arm. Another cut, and another, more blood scattering onto the floor. His sword was rising but the point of Appius' blade was at his throat. His eyes met Sigismund's down the length of polished steel.

Appius withdrew the blade, flicked it to clean the thin stem of Sigismund's blood already clotting on its edge. He half turned and walked to the edge of the circle while Sigismund felt the flow of blood from the wound slow.

'You are a good warrior,' said Appius, after a moment, 'maybe already even a great one.' The weapon master gave a weary smile. 'Better than me, without a doubt.'

Sigismund felt the need to dispute that last claim begin to move his tongue. He held his mouth shut.

'You shall be a Templar, of that there is no question…' Appius paused, and Sigismund felt that for once the weapon master was not certain what to say next. 'Of that there is no question. The question is, what more you will be.'

He turned to look at Sigismund, amber eyes steady.

Sigismund shook his head once.

'I am holding nothing back, master.'

'No, you are not - always going forwards, always pressing, always the conqueror, nothing held back. But that is not what I am saying or why you have yet to lay a blade edge on me.'

'You are a great duellist…' began Sigismund.

'I am old,' said Appius. 'Live with war as long as I have, lad, and it will teach you all I know and more. You are young and trained and ready to fight in the circle of swords, to be a Templar, and that should be enough for you to do more than let an old dog of war give you duelling scars.'

Sigismund did not move. The silence and stillness went on. 'What is at your back?' said Appius at last. 'You go forwards, we all advance - it is our way of war as ordained by the Emperor and the primarch, but what is behind you? What means that you will not turn, that you go forwards like a man trying to outrun the storm?'

'Because if we… If I do not go forwards, then no one will. Because if we do not go forwards, then we lose everything.'

'We? It seems likely to me, lad, that you and I are going to die bloody with swords in our hands no matter what. So who is the we that loses everything?'

The light of the setting sun fell through the open door in his memory. Beyond, he could see the shapes of figures dressed as dead kings with blood on their blades… 'Everyone that is not as strong as we are,' said Sigismund. Appius was still for a moment and then nodded.

'Again,' he said, and stepped back into the circle, blade rising.

The Dreadnought's blow was a blur. Pistons snapped out. Sigismund spun aside as the hammer's head crashed into the temple floor. Stone splinters showered up. He sliced his blade out one-handed, the edge aimed at the cable on Appius' weapon arm, but even halfway to death, the old warrior was fast and a master of his craft. The pistons snapped the hammer back and the Dreadnought twisted, torso pivoting fully around with machine-driven speed.

Sigismund's blow struck the metal of Appius' shield. Force juddered up his arm. Pistons behind the shield rammed it forwards. Sigismund turned to deflect the impact, but a fraction too late. He cannoned backwards, falling and the Dreadnought's hammer was descending. All of it so fast. He struck the floor, and pushed himself aside an instant before the hammer splintered the place he had been. He was up, but the shield pistoned into him, and he was staggering backwards.

He saw an opening then, two armour plates parting for an instant to expose wires and tubes beneath. He cut, knowing that the blow would not land, knowing that Appius had shown him the possibility. The Dreadnought twisted as the point of Sigismund's sword sliced into the exposed cables. Piston fluid and oil gushed out. The arm holding the Dreadnought's shield froze and locked. But even as the thrust drove home, the pivoting force of Appius' turn snapped the armour plates back together on Sigismund's sword. The blade broke.

Sigismund jerked back just in time as the Dreadnought's hammer drove into the space he had been occupying. Appius came forwards, striking again and again, and Sigismund was going backwards, the haft of his broken sword in his hand. He was going to—

The hammer caught him on the left shoulder. Armour cracked. Bones broke. He was falling. Now, at the end of this path, he would fail. He would not become the Master of the Templars. That honour would go to another. And down in the slow unfolding slices of his thought, he realised that it did not matter. Honour and rank were not prizes that had pulled him on. It was just a consequence of standing, of fighting of facing fate. It was not a matter of pride. If he was not strong enough to stand, to lead, to be a champion of his brother's oaths, then he should fail.

But who if not you? The thought sounded in the slowed time of his fall, and its voice might have been his own, or Appius', or Thera's. Who will stand if you will not? Who will you let die in your place?

He hit the floor. The Dreadnought was above him, hammer poised to strike down, and Sigismund could feel the haft of the broken sword in his hand. He came to his feet, broken armour grinding, his muscles driving him forwards in a blur. Within was stillness, the beats of his hearts caught between rising and falling. He struck, slicing the broken blade between armour plates, cutting and cutting oil scattering as joints froze.

He stopped, standing before Appius, the shattered tip of his sword almost touching the glowing slot in the Dreadnought's sarcophagus. Appius' machine body creaked but did not move, its bulk now a statue of armour.

'I yield,' came Appius' voice from the Dreadnought's speaker grilles.

Sigismund lowered his sword.

'The oaths of our Legion have their champion.' The voice was low but it rolled through the temple. Every legionary knelt instantly. Sigismund felt his blood pattering on the broken stone floor as he fell to his knee. Only Archamus remained standing as Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists, walked through the circle of kneeling warriors. He stopped within a pace of Sigismund.

'Rise, my son,' said Dorn. Sigismund stood. Silence radiated from the primarch like the hush that came before a storm. Sigismund looked up and met his gene-father's eyes. They held each other's gaze for a long moment, and then Dorn gestured. 'Archamus, the sword.'

Archamus stepped forward and held up a sheathed sword to Dorn, who grasped and drew it in a single movement. The light of the fire bowls flowed down the blade's edge and the words etched into the fuller: 'Imperator Rex,' they read. Dorn reversed the blade and then held it out pommel first. Sigismund waited a heartbeat and then took it. He knelt again, resting the sword point down, hands gripping the haft above the cross guard. The rest of the warriors in the temple rose to their feet.

'Do you give yourself to the guarding of this place of oaths?' asked Rogal Dorn.

'I give myself to that duty,' replied Sigismund. Inside, in the place of calm he had known in battle, he felt his thoughts tumble over and over through the steps of the past, carrying him forwards into a future of war and sacrifice.

'Do you give your life and your sword to those that have passed through here, and those that will come?'

'I give myself to the brotherhood of the Legion.'

'Do you make your vow again, in sight of all who share it?'

'I am the oaths sworn and they are my bond and blood.' A pause, silence in the flame-lit shadow.

'The sword and oath are yours,' said Rogal Dorn. Sigismund raised his head. The light from the torches and fire bowls fell across the faces of his brothers, and in his mind he thought for a second he could taste the dust on the wind as it blew across the Ionus plateau.

Slowly, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the metal of the sword in his hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John French is the author of several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection and Incarnation for The Horusian Wars and two tie-in audio dramas - the Scribe award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies and Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

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