Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [67]
Priamus landed with a skid, his armoured boots tearing at the mosaics and shearing them off in a wave of broken pebbles. His blade, chained to his wrist, crackled into life.
Nerovar, Cador and Bastilan were altogether more graceful in their landings. The sergeant came down in the shadow of one of the tilted statues. Its stern face eclipsed the setting sun.
‘These are the primarchs,’ he said to the others as they readied their weapons.
All heads turned towards Bastilan. He was right.
As representations of the primarchs went, they were plain to the point of almost being crude. The sons of the Emperor were usually depicted in grandeur and glory, rather than by sculptures so subtle and austere.
There was Sanguinius, Lord of the Blood Angels, prominently unwinged, with a childlike face lowered in repose. And there, Guilliman of the Ultramarines, his robed form so much slenderer than any other depiction of him that the knights had seen before. In one hand, he clutched an open tome. The other was raised to the sky, as if he was caught and forever frozen in a moment of great oratory.
Jaghatai Khan was bare-chested, bearing a curved blade in his hands and looking to the left, as if staring at the distant horizon. His hair was shaggy and long, whereas in so many masterpieces it was shaven but for a topknot. Next to him, Corax, the Prince of Ravens, wore a plain mask that was utterly featureless but for the eyes. It was as if he was unwilling to show his face in the company of his brothers, hiding his visage behind an actor’s mask.
Ferrus Manus and Vulkan shared a plinth. The brothers were bareheaded, and the only two primarchs sculpted here in armour. Both wore vests of mail, the fine links of chain on Manus’s breast a counterpoint to the larger scales adorning Vulkan’s. They stood back to back, facing in opposite directions, both carved to bear hammers in each hand.
Leman Russ of the Wolves stood with legs apart, head cast back, facing the sky. Whereas the other sons of the Emperor wore robes or armour, Russ was clad in rags sculpted over his chiselled musculature. He was also the only primarch with tensed fists, as if he stared into the heavens, awaiting some grim arrival.
A robed figure, hooded yet visibly slender to the point of emaciation, clutched the hilt of a winged blade, its tip between the statue’s bare feet. Here was the Lion, depicted as a warrior-monk, eyes closed in silent contemplation.
And, last of all, rising above Bastilan, was Rogal Dorn.
Dorn stood apart from his brothers, neither facing his kin, nor looking into the skies above. His regal visage was aimed at the ground to his left, as if the primarch stared at something vital only he could see. The robe he wore was plainer that those adorning his brothers’ icons, though it showed a cross on its breast, sculpted with care. Although he had been the Golden Lord, the commander of the Imperial Fists, his personal heraldry had inspired that of his Templar sons who followed.
His hands were what drew the knights’ eyes more than any other aspect in this gathering of demigods. One was held to his chest, the fingertips joined to the cross there, frozen in mid-stroke. The other was held out in the direction Dorn stared, palm up and kindly, as if offering aid to one who would rise from the floor.
It was quite the most humble and exquisite rendition of their gene-father Grimaldus had ever laid eyes on. He fought the sudden burning urge to fall to his knees in reverent prayer.
‘This is an omen,’ Bastilan continued. Grimaldus could barely believe only a handful of seconds had passed since the sergeant last spoke.
‘It is,’ the Reclusiarch replied. ‘We will purify this temple under the gaze of our forefather. Dorn watches us, brothers. Let us make him proud of the day he sired the first Templar.’
We move without hesitation, and without caution, through the cathedral.
The angled floor is an irritation that I’ve managed to blank from my mind by the time the third alien is dead. Room by room, we move in unison. The cathedral is a divided into a series