Malchai stood here now, his robe black as the gaps between stars, his crozius grasped in one fist. His senior, Biron Amadai, had been slain not five metres from where he now stood, and Malchai was now the Chapter’s Master of Sanctity in all but name. He had refused the title out of respect for his mentor, who had been widely loved throughout the Chapter.
Many senior Chaplains were figures of fear even to their fellow battle-brothers, but Amadai had generated something more than that – a respect bordering on awe. He had slain a Bloodthirster daemon almost single-handed on the last day of the war, but the wounds the beast inflicted on him were too great to heal. He had died in Malchai’s arms in the rubble of the nave outside, and the Reclusiarch had wept.
One could not imagine that savage sternness bent in grief, not now. Malchai was a formidable figure, one to whom even the Kharne himself sometimes deferred. He and Jonah Kerne had clashed many times down the years, in arguments over orthodoxy, and the proper application of the Codex Astartes. Their relations were respectful, and proper, but Kerne knew that Malchai disliked him.
He could not return that dislike. The man was too brave not to admire, and it had been Sergeant Kerne who had saved the Reclusiarch’s life when the grief-blinded Chaplain had refused to leave his master’s body to the Punisher hordes. Kerne and a single squad of Space Marines, the remnants of several companies, had fought around Amadai’s corpse and so preserved it from defilement.
Ever since, Malchai had seemed to resent Jonah, as though he could not bear having a witness to his own moment of weakness.
The Reclusiarch afforded Kerne a cold nod as he entered the side-chapel, no more. The other captains were greeted formally, by name. Last to enter were Ares Thuraman of Ardunai Company, the senior captain in the Chapter, and finally the Kharne himself.
Al Murzim was not the tallest or the strongest of them all, but there was, as always, that quiet about him which engaged their attentions at once.
Breughal Paine had once observed that the Kharne said more in a moment of silence than others did with long speeches, and so it seemed now as he gazed around the plinth at his assembled captains and senior staff.
In addition to the Space Marines, there were normal human figures present also. They had entered through the side door, and stood dwarfed by their superhuman colleagues. Kerne knew them by sight.
Isa Garakis, a lean, grey man, the chief navigator of the Chapter, who had been finding a way through the warp for all of his adult life. The pain of every one of those journeys was etched into the deep lines of his face. His eyes were sunken grey flints buried in his skull. He looked like a man who no longer knew how to sleep.
The castellan, Asa Rubio, a robust man in his sixties who would have seemed large and formidable in any other company, despite his white beard. He was responsible for the day-to-day administration of Mors Angnar, and commanded a human staff of several thousands. An Aspirant to the Adeptus Astartes, his body had rejected most of the key genetic implants necessary in the process of becoming a Space Marine, but the Kharne had recognised the analytical brilliance of the young man’s mind and had taken him on to the staff of the Chapter Administratum. That had been nearly fifty years ago, and Rubio had repaid his master’s faith in him many times over. The Kharne had relied heavily on him in the rebuilding of Mors Angnar and the restocking of the Chapter’s magazines and transport pool.
Finally, there was Tomas Massaron, captain of the Ogadai, and the senior shipmaster of the fleet.
It was Massaron that Kerne regarded with most interest. This officer commanded the ship upon which Mortai would live for the long voyage to the Kargad system, and to a great extent the success or failure of the expedition would depend on Massaron as much as on Jonah himself.
Massaron returned his stare, unabashed, seemingly fascinated. The shipmaster had been around the Adeptus Astartes long enough to lose most of the awe with which normal humanity regarded the giant warriors of the Emperor, and Kerne felt himself being sized up with open curiosity.
They had met before, but only fleetingly. The Ogadai had been undergoing one of its never-ending refits when Kerne had last led Mortai out to do battle with the Gulbec Pirates in the Border Systems two years before, and Massaron had not seen action since the wars against the ork marauders of the Long Bleed a decade previous. He had done well though, taking on two ork cruisers in the old Ogadai and reducing them to glowing scrap in the space of an afternoon.
He had a reputation as a calm, unflappable officer, and his appearance did not belie it. Short, even for a human, he had brown eyes and a shock of stiff, salt and pepper hair above a curiously young face. He stood at ease, dressed in the night-blue livery of the Dark Hunters fleet personnel, the triple axe-heads of his rank gleaming on his sleeves.
Kerne’s gaze flicked across other, better-known faces.
Graes Venann, the senior Librarian, no doubt still annoyed that he had been finagled into promoting young Kass. Well, one had to crack eggshells to eat eggs. They locked eyes for a second, and Venann tilted his head to one side and smiled, inscrutable as a lizard.
The other line company captains, Kerne knew well. Shaef Darric of Fourth had come up through Mortai like himself. Nortan Blask of Seventh had covered his retreat from the landing pads on the day the Punishers arrived, losing half his men. Fell Ambros, leader of the Haradai, the Scout Company, was the wiliest fighter Kerne had ever known, with an evil sense of humour. He and Fornix were great friends.
The Scout Master sported a jutting, plaited beard and bore the ritual scars which had long died out in the Chapter. Some said there was a future Kharne in him. He had already done much to modify the Dark Hunters Codex, in the face of Malchai’s opposition. Jonah had worked closely with him in the campaign against the Long Bleed Waaagh! In that war, Ambros’s Scouts had slain as many of the foe as the line companies had, and there were voices in the Chapter which said that the role of the Dark Hunters Scouts should be expanded even further.
The Dark Hunters, like all the varied Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, were a compact, combined-arms force of immense power. They were an army, yes, but they were more than that.
Looking over the assembled captains, Kerne knew that any one of them would die for him, as he would for them. It was not a matter of personal likes and dislikes. They were, in the last analysis, kin to each other, brothers even in the genetic sense of the word, comrades-in-arms, and believers in a single, unforgiving faith.
It was what made a Space Marine Chapter something close to invincible. Even in defeat, they did not abandon that faith, in the Emperor and in one another. That belief enabled them to face annihilation without a qualm.
Kerne was not the most pious of his kind, but as his brothers gathered about the Chapter Master and the hum of talk died down, he found himself giving thanks that he was here, now, with these like-minded comrades. He could not have chosen any better fate for himself than to stand here in this place.
Among his brothers.
‘I ask the chief Reclusiarch to lead us in a moment of prayer,’ Kharne Al Murzim said quietly.
In the silence that followed they could all hear the roar of the winter wind outside, and vying with it, the thunder of transport engines from the landing pads.
Malchai raised his crozius, and kissed it.
‘Lord of Hosts,’ he said, ‘In thy Glory, and thy Goodness, let us be worthy of our blood and those who have gone before us into your peace. We are here to do thy bidding, to kill and be killed, all with thy blessing upon us.
‘In the Emperor’s name.’
‘By the Throne,’ all those in the chamber said.
A blue light sizzled into being, hovering above the chamber’s central plinth. It flickered like a winded flame, before steadying and assuming other colours. A series of orbs wheeled in orbit around a bright central sphere. Some of them were spattered with tiny flashing red lights.