The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,86

something new. You’re placed well to benefit. He’ll need counsellors, ones who understand how things work now.’

But that was the problem. I had done more than understand it. I had contributed to it. I was part of the decay. We all were.

‘He needs no counsellors,’ I said, sinking onto my fine couch miserably. ‘Really, truly, he needs none of us at all.’

I must have slept, perhaps for only a few hours, perhaps for much longer. I had awful dreams, even worse than I had had over the past weeks and months, and I could feel myself thrashing in my sleep. In the most vivid of them I felt that the chamber around me was burning, the flames streaking up the drapes and crashing into the high ceiling. I saw faces in those flames, inhuman faces with stretched jaws and long fangs.

I awoke to find Jek shaking me.

‘Only a dream,’ I mumbled, coming to slowly. I could see the intact outline of my bedchamber, and the walls were not burning.

‘No,’ she said, her expression terrible. ‘Not any more.’

She dragged me from the couch. My robes were sticky with sweat but she gave me no chance to change them. I noticed as we hurried through the corridors that the light from outside was even redder than before – arterial in intensity, and flashing wildly. The air was hotter than it had ever been, hard to breathe and full of choking grit.

‘What is this?’ I blurted, still disorientated. ‘How long was I out?’

She didn’t answer, but hauled me to a high balcony. We stumbled into the open, and the curtains flapped wildly about us.

I could see the Lion’s Gate void port laid out far below. It was a long way away, screened by shifting palls of ash and dust, but I could see enough.

I staggered, catching hold of the railing. Jek reached for me, holding me up, but she was already trembling, her whole body rigid with shudders.

I had no words. I had no thoughts. I felt like I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. From somewhere, some old instinct that wouldn’t quite leave me, I wanted to ask where Guilliman was, where Valoris was, where the High Lords were, whether we could get our forces into place and do what needed to be done, but my lips would no longer move.

I just stood there, paralysed, rooted with fear, and said nothing.

We no longer needed to worry about Cadia. We no longer needed to worry about anything. It had happened at last, everything that the prophets had foretold and that we had ignored.

The Eye had come. The Eye had come to Terra.

Valerian

I had never moved as fast. I had never cleaved as strongly. My muscles, sanctified and gene-wrought, had never responded as perfectly.

Killing is an art, just like the others we excel at. When it becomes necessary, we do not treat it as a duty, we treat it as a vocation. We learn the ways of our opponents just as a painter studies her model, observe the light and the shade, the form and heft, the threat and the opportunity.

I was alone in that hour, as alone as I have ever been. The Grey Knights were always close by, and fought as an unbreakable unit, and therein lay the essential difference between us.

Do not think that we ignored one another – far from it. We saved one another from death many times in those first few decisive moments. This still remains, though – I fought in the way I had been bred to, driving my superlative physical form to its limit, gauging every threat with a microsecond’s precision, relying on the absolute integrity of my equipment.

They, though, were a brotherhood. I had learned their names by then – Alcuin, the Justicar, led the squad. They covered one another’s backs, they roared encouragement, they watched for a momentary slip from their battle-comrades. I witnessed this even as I tore into the heart of the daemonkind, and even as the defence lasers on the wall flooded the eerie scene with dazzling light, and even as the golden attack craft roared overhead to strafe and bludgeon.

I could sense their psychic overspill as they waded into the enemy, blades and hammers whirling. Every physical blow was matched by a corresponding thrust of the mind, and their esoteric halberds flared with the increase in velocity.

Thus we entered the arena of the enemy, like and yet unlike to one another, a lion set beside angels. They screamed