Black-Marked

[wecanhaveallthree]

This tiny little story contains spoilers for SPACE MARINE TWO, in particular, the identity of the Chaplain. Don't read it if you don't want to know which handsome hunk is under that helm.

---

All Macragge’s moods are to be treasured.

Marneus Calgar stared into the storm.

It had been a true tempest that day - wild and free, as though the heavens themselves danced in fierce delight to see King Konor’s son returned at last. Calgar’s gene-sire had turned his face to it and smiled, in welcome, in acceptance, and spoken those words.

At the time, Calgar had not understood the worth of them. He had been shaken - as all Ultramarines were - by the Primarch’s return, by the truth of the man they called ‘father’ but only knew from his written word. He had been uprooted from a hierarchy he had known all his life. There had seemed no place for the grizzled veteran - the Chapter Master - when a Primarch walked the world again. Calgar had been consumed by his regrets and failures, as though every disorder of the Imperium was his doing, alone and entire, not a result of ten thousand years of mortal fear, superstition, and death.

Driven by that sudden lack of purpose, by the sharpened realisation of his Imperium’s infirmity, Calgar had thrown himself into action. He had crossed the Rubicon Primaris in the early days, before the operation’s success rate had climbed from a dismal thirty percent survival rate, and proved Archmagos Cawl’s methods sound. He had stood firm at Vigilus, not only against the Archenemy vanguard and xenos menace but crossed blades with the Despoiler himself, dreaded Abaddon and his daemon blade.

It had been a close thing. Too close. Even now, even through the Armour of Heraclus, Calgar felt the storm in his chest, a chill in his hearts where Drach’nyen had laid them open. Warp-touched wounds were always slow to heal, their scars a reminder of the Archenemy’s poisonous nature.

Yes. Poison.

Calgar stared into the storm. He did not look at the bright domes and marbled temples that surrounded his chambers. He did not flinch as grumbling gusts sleeted freezing water from Hera’s Falls across the open, sunken courtyard, nor did he spare a glance at the battle honours fluttering from balustrades and balconies. They had kept for centuries. They would not falter now.

Nor, it seemed, would the Ultramarine still kneeling in a sodden, growing puddle as his duty robes shed veritable rivers onto the courtyard flagstones.

Would this battle-brother, called to attend his Chapter Master, be treasuring the planet’s mood? Would he see it as disapproval, punishment - even penitence? Did he feel an itch at the back of his neck from the ever-mysterious gaze of King Konor, Battle King of Macragge, wrought in stone and stood amongst a cortege of long-dead champions?

Calgar doubted it. Far better men than this - far better men than he - had stood in this place and been judged.

For a moment, he could almost hear the whip-crack of Cato Sicarius’ accusations, his daggers of accusation sinking into the flesh of the accused as he paced to-and-fro as though he sought to flank the worthy on trial as surely as he would an enemy position on the battlefield. For a moment, he could see Uriel Ventris - proud, unyielding Ventris - as he parried back, as he took the blows he must and turned aside those he could not. Sicarius, who had used the Codex Astartes as a weapon to sink his long-time rival, to send him to the very Eye. Ventris, who had offered no defence but his actions, and who had paid the price for it.

And he did not have to listen hard at all to hear echoes of his own voice, reaching back across the years.

’These men have broken faith with the Codex Astartes…’

’By their own admission, they have abandoned its teachings…’

’I, too, am bound by the Codex… and must sentence you to death.’

And the reply of fierce, brave Pasanius: ’I regret nothing of what we achieved. We acted with courage and honour, and no man can ask more of us than that.’

The storm began to roar, as though voicing approval. Hera’s Falls bathed the courtyard, but no mere surge of water could wash away the deeds - good or ill - that had happened there. Ventris and Pasanius had survived their Death Oath and returned, going on to further glory. Sicarius had tempered his zeal and need for victory, now standing at the Primarch’s right hand. Guilliman himself had admitted, unthinkable as it was, that there were flaws in his teachings: that the Codex was intended as a living document, to be reshaped and improved by the theoretical and practical of his sons.

The Primarch had given them that duty, and they had failed in it. They had been imitators, pale and weak, children too fearful of straying from their father’s guidance to truly learn from it and become men of their own making.

If the Astartes knelt under Konor’s eyes was guilty, he was no more so than Calgar himself.

The Chapter must change. It must evolve. But in that change, it must not lose sight of itself - it must not become like those lost offshoots of the line, the morbid Mortifactors, the brutal Libators. It needed the unflinching zeal of Sicarius as much as it needed the ingenuity of Ventris. Guilliman had left that shaping of his sons to their brother. He had not superseded Calgar. He had trusted him with the most precious resource in the Imperium.

And so Calgar looked away from the storm.

He turned, at last, to the man who had held his position for a local hour in the worst of Macragge’s deep winter.

‘Rise,’ Calgar said, softly, ‘Son of Guilliman.’

The man’s head came up.

Calgar met the harsh gaze of Battle-Brother Leandros - grim, severe, his eyes as cold and blue as glaciers, the hard line of his mouth as thin and sharp as Drukhari mercy - and smiled.

Untempered. Unbroken. Utterly unyielding. A blade that had drawn a brother’s blood in the necessity of the moment. That was what Leandros was, and his lack of veterancy - of acknowledgement or advancement in Second Company’s ranks - spoke of how he was seen by those who fought alongside him. A warrior who would never rise and did not seek to. If there had been even the hint of ambition in the man, Calgar would sent him to the Eye without a second thought. If there had been even the glimmer that he had betrayed a brother for personal advancement - the Death Oath would have been burned into him.

But no. There was nothing of that in Leandros. Experience had keened him, sharpened him - but there was no trace of regret in those hearts. He had acted justly, and Captain Titus’ failure to reappear had burnished that belief.

Calgar knew otherwise, of course. He knew of Thrax, of the Inquisition’s games, their power plays. There would be a reckoning there. Not yet. Not now. But it would come, as surely and patiently as ice crept over Macragge’s hinterlands. It would come. And it would mean nothing if the former Captain’s chief accuser still stood on the line, in opposition, in - if not ignorance - then without understanding.

Leandros was a weapon. One that must be carefully sharpened, carefully wielded, lest it cut those who would try to wield it. A blade to shape the Chapter’s future.

But never to be mistaken for what it was.

‘Brother,’ Marneus Calgar spoke again, and the storm was behind his words. ‘I have a role for you.’

A duty. A charge. A burden.

Blackened armour and a skull-fronted helm.

The Chaplain is no longer a man. No longer a brother. He is the will of the Chapter manifest. Keeper of the faith. Punisher of the unrighteous. No evil escapes him. No taint. No heresy. No wickedness. His harsh gaze trues the path the Chapter will walk into the unknown.

There are hard days ahead. Strange days. And if the crackling lightning that illuminates King Konor’s face casts a look of approval upon the stone countenance, if the old ruler sees the works of his grandchildren and proclaims this turning, this tempering, good - perhaps that is mere coincidence. A trick of the seasons. Just one of Macragge’s many moods.

Even so, if only for a moment, Marneus Calgar treasures it.