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There was no sign of his opponent, and for a brief moment Garro wondered if the Decius-thing had landed somewhere else, perhaps outside the crater.
Something shattered under his boot as his foot touched the soil and interrupted his train of thought.
Small, glistening objects were scattered all around him, shining like tiny jewels. As he bent down to recover his sword, Garro realised what they were: the frozen corpses of thousands of insects, flies and beetles.
Nathaniel!
The forewarning brushed the edges of his thoughts, a faint breath of wind upon the ocean of his mind, but it was not enough.
The moon dust exploded upward in a storm of grey, Libertas tumbling away as the creature lurking beneath the powder burst out, talons reaching for his throat. Garro grappled witir the Lord of the Flies and went off his feet into a slow motion tumble. He grunted with effort as he punched his adversary hard in the sternum, and felt chitin give with the impact.
The Death Guard had known a thousand battles, and in every one the constant clatter of weapons had been the music that accompanied them; the hue and cry of fighting men locked in struggles for their lives. Now, out on the airless sun-blinding whiteness of Luna, there was no sound at all. The silence was broken only by the rush of blood in his veins, the rhythm of his exhalations. There was an absence of scents too: the foetid stink of the creature that wreathed it inside the citadel was gone. In its place Garro could only smell the tang of his own blood and the acrid traces of burning plastics from his armour's damaged servos.
They fought unarmed, hand-to-hand, every battle skill they could draw upon pushed to the fore. Using the low gravity to his advantage, Garro pushed off a rock outcropping and let his momentum flip him up and around. He turned a boot to meet his enemy's face and saw a compound eye burst into a cloud of
polluted blood. The droplets froze instantly into hard black jewels that scattered over the moon dust. Some questioning, analytical portion of the battle-captain's mind wondered how it was that this freak could even exist in the vacuum. It had no suit seals, as Garro's did, no airtight layer of atmosphere to sustain it. There were patches of dark frost on the limbs of the pestilent champion where the cold of space had iced over spilt fluids, but still it lived on, defiant by its very existence.
He took a blow that knocked the breath from him, ignoring the new alert runes that haloed his vision. Streams of white vapour - precious air - issued out from points of damage beneath the eagle cuirass. Eventually suffocation would come, even to an Astartes. 'You must die, abomination/ Garro said aloud, 'even if it be my last victory!'
The Lord of the Flies pressed upon him, and Garro's back slammed into the wall of the crater, into the inky shadows cast by the rock formation. The ruined insect face leered over him and the great claw tore the cuirass from him, tossing it away. He fought back, but the Decius-thing was faster. Burning pain lanced into him as the warped Astartes bored the serrated talons through layers of ceramite and flexsteel. The thing was going to rip his armour open and expose the meat inside to the killing vacuum.
'Is this my duty?' Garro asked. 'I am Death Guard... I am dead...' A sudden sorrow engulfed him, the weight of all his darkest, most morose moments returning as one. Perhaps it was fitting that he perished here, in this lifeless stone arena. His Legion was already destroyed. What was he now? No more than a relic, an embarrassment, his warning delivered and his purpose ended. The cold was filling him, leeching
out the life from his bones. Perhaps it was for the best, to accept death. What else was there for him? What did he have left? His vision blurred, the pressure pushing him down.
Faith.
The word exploded inside him. 'Who?' he gasped. 'Keeler?'
Have faith, Nathaniel. You are of purpose.
'I... I am...' Garro choked, blood in his mouth stifling his voice. 'I am...' His fingers touched loose rock and closed around a fist-sized stone. 7 am!'
With a bellow of exertion, he swung the piece of moon rock and slammed it hard into the Lord of the Flies. The impact echoed up his arm and the mutant fell back, a great curl of dead skin flapping back to reveal a distorted jawbone and a forest of teeth. Garro threw himself forward and clasped at his fallen sword. The chain of Kaleb's icon was snagged around the hilt and he caught the brass links in his fingers, dragging the weapon into his grip. Then Libertas was in his hands and he felt a surge of power from the mere act of holding it once more. He felt complete, he felt right. Garro had told Kaleb of the weapon's origin, and now as the globe of Terra became visible at the lunar horizon, the blade made all his doubts and pains vanish.
With a sword in his hand and the God-Emperor at his back, the Death Guard realised that his duty was far from over. He would not die today. Nathaniel Garro was of purpose.
The creature that he had once called brother was on its knees, trying to gather up the pieces of its face and press them back together. He had blinded it. Garro loped to the mutant's side and drew back the sword. His breath came in shallow gasps and he brought the
weapon to bear. For a moment, there was pity in Nathaniel's eyes. Shame and compassion warred for a brief instant across his expression. Poor, foolish Decius. He was right. He had been forsaken, but only by his own spirit.
The Lord of the Flies looked up to meet the edge of the blade. Garro beheaded the monstrous Astartes with a single strike of the sword, taking his enemy through the neck. The corpse tumbled away and burst silently into a cloud of blackened fragments. The papery twists turned in the darkness and disintegrated, into ash, into motes of black and then nothing. The head dropped to lie in the moon dust and twitched with unheard laughter. It melted even as Garro watched, curls of skin and flensed bone becoming cinders, as if burning from the inside out. Finally, a shimmering twist of smoky energy burst free and shot away, up into the sky, trailing sense echoes of mocking amusement.
You ca
The sphere of Terra shone in the darkness, the eye of a god turned to face a universe ranged against it. Garro placed his hands to his chest, palms open, thumbs raised, in the sign of the Imperial aquila. He bowed. 'I am ready, lord,' he told the sky. 'No doubts, no fears, only faith. Tell me Your will, and Thy will be done.'
SEVENTEEN
The Sigillite Speaks The Oncoming Storm
WHEN THE SILENT Sisters came for him, he was on one knee in the meditation cell, his sword drawn and the brass icon in his hands. The words of the Lectitio Divinitatus were on his lips, embedded in his thoughts after so many repetitions, and the women exchanged quizzical looks with each other to hear him murmur them beneath his breath. They summoned him with brisk gestures and he did as they demanded. His duty robes gathered in close around him, the feel of the roughly woven material on his skin still chafing on the new scars from his injuries and the vacuum burns. He left his power armour in the chamber, but the sword came with him. Libertas had not left his side since the duel in the Sea of Crises.
They led him up the length of the Somnus Citadel, to the glass needle at the very tip. It wasn't until he entered and they closed the doors behind him that he
laid eyes on another Astartes. It seemed like weeks since he had last seen a kinsman.
The figure came closer. The chamber was a cone made of glass triangles and thick coils of black metal, and the architecture cast strange shadows with sharp edges from the reflected earthlight. 'Nathaniel. Ah, lad. We feared the worst.'